


The Greek Tragicomedy of Stark

by sakizar



Series: Relative Insanity [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Incredible Hulk (2008), Thor (Movies)
Genre: But Tony's Actually a Pretty Great Dad, Darcy Lewis is Tony Stark's Daughter, Darcy's Sort of a Genius Too, Except Whem He's Not, Gen, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Obie You JERK!, Phil/Tony is a Horrible Horrible Lie, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-07
Updated: 2014-11-14
Packaged: 2018-01-03 22:39:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 25,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1073880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sakizar/pseuds/sakizar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The history of Tony Stark and his daughter Darcy Lewis can be written in the margins of Greek mythology. </p><p>Prequel to 'Run That By Me One More Time' and 'Theory of Relatives'. Series of one-shots of important conversations Tony and Darcy have with and about each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Oedipus, King of Thebes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT 2/9/2014: Story's the same just going through and adjusting things. Proofreading and all that.

_September 1989...  
_

"Dummy! No! Not okay. That is not okay. Put that back! Ah, fuck."

Obadiah Stane cringes at the continuous crashing coming from Tony's raised platform. For such a brilliant inventor, the boy is remarkably immature. "Tony! I need a word. Come down."

"Ow. Shit. Yeah, one second, Obie. Be right down." A loud clang sounds, and Tony continues in hushed tones, "Dummy, you worthless hunk of junk, you know that you're not allowed to- Hey, watch it! I swear, if you-"

"Tony," Obadiah sighs, this could take a while if he doesn't speed up the young man.

"Yeah, sorry, Obie. Dummy, I'll deal with you later. Go to the charging station. That's right shoo. Stop sulking you overgrown- Yeah, yeah, whatever." Finally, Tony drops down from his platform. He's about as presentable as he always is after spending too much time in Tony-land, looking more like a mechanic than a multi-million-dollar CEO. "Hey, Obie. What's the crisis today?"

"Tony, do you remember Marie Lewis?" Obadiah doubts that his godson remembers the model he took to that fund-raiser last week, let alone a woman he hasn't seen in so long.

Tony smiles his most lewd smile. "Yeah, she was great, both professionally and personally. Lots of fun, but still smart and dedicated. And then you fired her. That was annoying. We had to hire a new PA. I didn't take advantage of her, you know? We were just having a little fun."

Interesting. The whelp remembers the girl. Maybe he made a mistake making the girl go away. Tony might've been easier to control if Obadiah had better leverage. Oh well, what's done is done. "Yes, well, she was a sexual harassment suit waiting to happen."

Tony snorts and rolls his eyes. "Fine, whatever, Obie. She was fired and then she dropped off the face of the planet."

So the kid did miss her. "Not quite. I was still in contact with her, but I told her that it would be best if she didn't contact you."

That seems to throw Tony. Poor, poor Tony. "Um, why?"

"For being a genius, you can be a bit thick at times. The girl was pregnant, Tony."

"Oh." Tony drops into a chair. He stares at his hands probably turning the thought around in his brilliant mind. "Well, that was about a year ago, right? Did she..."

"She carried the child to term and gave birth to a healthy baby girl three months ago."

Tony breaks out into an addlepated, ridiculous grin. "A little girl." The grin dies as Tony works through his glee. "Was she mine?"

"Yes, which was why Marie had to be fired or at least why she couldn't work as your PA anymore. You were just about to become CEO. You didn't need that drama."

"So why tell me now? I'm still too newly minted as CEO to survive an illegitimate child born to an SI employee."

"Marie is dead."

"What?" Tony slumps into his chair. "Fuck, how? Is the kid okay?"

"The baby was at daycare. She's fine." Obadiah takes a deep breath. Tony is not going to take the next part well. "Marie was hit by a drunk driver. She died instantly."

Tony barks out a laugh. "Another one. Isn't that ironic, Obie? Do you think I'm cursed or is it the Stark blood that's cursed? Little girl will never know her mother."

Obadiah shakes his head. "Tony, thousands of car accidents happen every day. There's no curse."

"They seem to happen more often than usual around me."

"Tony."

"No, I'm fine, Obie. It's not like-" He cuts himself off with a bitter laugh. "Huh, Marie, Maria. There's another coincidence. Weird, huh, Obie?" Tony shakes his head. "So, what do you want? You didn't tell me before for a reason. Why are you telling me now?"

"Tony, you're in a better place now. The kid's fine. The accident was about a week ago. I took care of the arrangement. She was adopted by Marie's older brother and his wife. They live in San Diego."

"Okay."

"Relax, Tony. You don't have to do anything. The kid doesn't need you. I just thought you should know."

"Almost a year after you found out. Three months after she was born. A week after Marie died. After she was adopted. Did I miss the part where-" Tony freezes. There it is, the righteous fury of the naive. "You sonuvabitch. You just slipped the form releasing my parental rights into all the other bullshit that I had to sign, didn't you? Why bother asking permission when asking forgiveness is so much easier? So much less mess and fuss."

"Tony, be serious. You can barely take care of yourself. You can't discipline a robot. How could you possibly take care of a child?"

Tony nods stiffly. So not forgiven then? "Thank you for informing me about Marie. I'll see you on Monday, Stane."

"Don't dwell on it, Tony." With that Obadiah turns to leave Tony to his silly little toys. And likely his alcohol. All the deadlines have been met, so Tony can afford to wallow for the weekend.

"Understood. One last favor, Obadiah? What's the little girl's name?"

Obadiah turns back. Tony's eyes are a little dead. Probably because it was a car wreck. "Darcy Lewis."

"And you said Marie's older brother adopted her? Good, I met him once. He didn't like me, but he's a good man." Tony shrugs and laughs derisively. "Well, most good men don't like me."

"He doesn't know who Darcy's father was."

"Great, so I'm never to have contact with her?" Good, even like this the kid can take a hint.

"Tony, you that it's better if you don't."

"Whatever. See you later."

"Bye, Tony." Obadiah shakes his head as he hears the sound of ice dropping into a tumbler.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN. So this probably shouldn't be happening. But I wanted to put down my back story for Darcy. For the purposes of this story and 'verse timeline prior to this is:
> 
> Nov 1965 James Rhodes born.
> 
> May 1968 Tony Stark born.
> 
> Aug 1981 Tony Stark enters MIT.
> 
> May 1984 Tony Stark graduates MIT.
> 
> Jun 1989 Darcy Lewis born.
> 
> Sept 1989 Marie dies, Darcy adopted by Dave Lewis. This chap.
> 
> I'm not real pleased with this chapter title, but eh, they get better? Maybe? IDK.
> 
> ~S


	2. Amphitryon, Foster-Father of Heracles

_December 1990..._

Dave Lewis isn't a naturally suspicious man, but he's been trained to it. He's trained himself to notice the people around his wife and daughter. And there's this kid that he keeps seeing. Almost every time they go to the park. And this kid is always hiding his face. But something about the way his gaze is constantly directed at the baby swings where Maddy has little Darcy has Dave stalking towards this kid.

Under his hood, he's fashionably scruffy, but his clothes are ripped and soiled as though he works in a garage. He doesn't seem dangerous, but Dave knows that not all of the bad ones look bad.

"Hey, kid." He drops a heavy hand onto the kid's shoulder and feels the muscles under the jean jacket tense. "You got a kid out there?"

The kid tries to make himself smaller and squirm out of Dave's grip.

"Kinda." His voice is familiar, but Dave can't place it. His answer doesn't inspire a lot of confidence either.

"What exactly does that mean? Kinda?" The kid's still squirming, but Dave has tightened his grip. He's not letting this kid go. Dave's contemplating calling the police in the next three minutes. But first he has to find out why this kid is so focused on Darcy.

"My kid was taken away from me."

"Unfit?"

The kid stills at that. He yanks his arm from Dave's grip and draws himself a little taller without showing his face to Dave. "Not officially." He shrugs. "But there were those that thought so. I didn't see the point in fighting it." He looks back to Maddy and Darcy. "I wish I had." The kid sighs and pulls his hood down. "Hi, Dave."

Dave drops to the bench behind him. "Tony. Tony Stark?"

Tony flashes him a grin. "Mr. Lewis." He extends his hand.

Dave shakes his hand mostly out of reflex. "So, you've been staring at Darcy..."

"Yeah, I guess this wasn't the best plan. Mostly I didn't notice you."

"As you were too busy being a creeper staring at my wife and daughter."

Tony rolls his eyes. "Yes, yes." He raises an eyebrow. "You gonna press charges?"

"I should. You gave up any right to her. Or else I wouldn't have been able to adopt her."

Tony's face shut down. "Yes, well, that was a bit of an oversight on my part, wasn't it?" He passes a hand over his face. "Not important. She's yours now. I just wanted to see her a couple times. And I noticed that your wife brings her here a lot."

"So you dressed up like a homeless pedophile? How was that not going to get you arrested? Even if I hadn't noticed you someone would have."

"Yeah, but I wouldn't have been staring at their kid."

Dave waves a hand dismissing Tony's argument. "No, they still might've reported you. I'm what most would call a pillar in a close-knit suburban neighborhood. If some stranger starts messing with my family, I'm going to hear about it."

"Oh." He shrugs. "Well, there's that. But I think you would've come down here to look out for this mysterious pedo that was staring at you kid. So that puts us firmly right back here."

Dave laughs. "Yes, I suppose so." He sighs. "So what happens now?"

"Darcy is legally yours. You could definitely get a restraining order against me to make sure that I couldn't bother you or your family ever again." Tony kicks at the ground, scattering the wood chips.

Dave nods. "I could do that. That's not what I asked though. You've been hanging out here for the past few weeks at least. Do you want Darcy back?"

Tony stares wide-eyed at Dave. His voice shakes as he asks, "Could you make that happen?"

"I could. Is that what you want?"

Tony gazes out at the little girl. Something in his faces changes from shocked to wistful. Not a great wistful. "No, she's happy with the two of you." He turns back to face Dave. "Besides, what would I do with a kid? I'm not exactly stable. Kids need stability and consistency. I am neither of those things. If I didn't break her within the week, she'd probably break me."

Dave nods. "Good."

Tony frowns. "Good?"

"You know your limits. You know that it's important to be there for Darcy. And you care enough about her to let her go."

Tony doesn't say anything for a minute. Then he laughs. "You ass, you King Solomon'd me. You went all 'divide the baby, and let each of you have one half'. And apparently I passed? Cool. So what does that mean?"

"It means that I want my daughter to meet her Uncle Tony. Who will be visiting periodically from now on."

"Uncle Tony?" Tony bites his lips and smiles at his feet. "Yeah, I can work with that."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN 'Theory of Relatives' is probably on hold a couple of weeks but this one moving forward pretty well.
> 
> ~S


	3. Narcissus, Son of Liriope and Cephisus

_October 1995..._

"Uncle Tony! Uncle Tony! What didja bring me?"

"Bah. Ragmuffin, who said I brought you anything, you midget?"

Darcy rolls her eyes. Uncle Tony never acts like an adult when it's just the two of them talking. He always saves his grown-up behavior for Mom, Dad, and the phone. It's kind of sad. "Tony," she draws out his name. "You always bring me something. Even that time you came here for your birthday, you brought me something."

"I wanted you to make me something, and I have very discerning tastes. Those macramé things your mother has been having you make me are a fire hazard in my house."

"You say that every time. Daddy says that your house is a fire hazard all on its own."

"Yeah, but your dad's never been to my house, so what does he know?"

Darcy snorts. That's crazy. "Daddy knows everything!"

"Yes, yes, your blatant, misplaced, and unfounded hero-worship is duly noted."

"Hero-worship?" Uncle Tony always uses weird words and never tries to dumb himself down to her level. He once asked her how she was supposed to learn if everyone talked to her on the level she already knew.

"Eh, it's a thing where you view all of the best traits of a person and only those parts. It can become dangerous because it can hurt anyone involved. Like if you idolize your father so much that you don't think about his limitations. If you overestimate him, he might be hurt if he can't live up to your view of him or, uh, something like that."

"Huh, so it's like how you view yourself? Like that, Uncle Tony?"

"Ouch, no, actually that's called narcissism."

"Why? Narcissy?"

"No. Narcissism. Um, it's from a Greek myth. Some moron fell in love with his reflection and died. He refused to look away to eat, drink, or do anything but stare into his reflection."

Darcy frowns. Uncle Tony likes himself, but she didn't think that he would ignore everything in his life to stare at himself. "That's a sad story, Uncle Tony." She smacks his tummy. "If you die like that, I will never, ever forgive you."

"I know, kiddo. I'm working on it. Hanging out with you and your family has helped."

Darcy smiles and waves for Tony to bend down. He shrugs and leans down. She pats his head. "Good boy. We'd miss you. We like having you around, too. Even Dad."

He gave a squawk of protest, but then sighs. "Yeah, I'd miss you guys, too."

Darcy stares at Uncle Tony. Mom and Dad talked about Tony at night when they thought Darcy was asleep. They said things about his lifestyle and his recklessness and his inability to be responsible for anything. Darcy's pretty sure they were exaggerating, but those seem like they'd be traits that would lead to something like the myth he described.

Tony fidgets under her gaze. "Well, that was fun. Let's never talk about this again, shall we?"

Darcy smiles. Tony isn't really for feels or emotions. "Agreed." She extends her hand to seal the deal.

Tony grins. "Yeah, you got it, kid."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is pretty much a thing for Tony.


	4. Echo, an Oread

_February 1999..._

Tony raises an eyebrow at the pile of small child on his couch. This can't be good. "Fire-brand, hey. Did I miss something? Why are you in my house? We did not have a play-date scheduled."

"Where were you? I've been here all day." Darcy's voice is thick. Shit, the kid's been crying. Definitely not good.

"I don't live here all the time. I told you this, Echo. I know I told you this."

"Why do you call me 'Echo'?"

"Ah, well, that's me breaking my own rules as usual." It was such a short conversation and four years ago. Darcy probably didn't even remember, but Tony couldn't let himself forget. He even had nightmares about it. He shakes his head. Not the point. "But, seriously, half-pint, why aren't you at home with your parents?"

"I was adopted."

Well, Tony supposes it was just a matter of time before she figured it out. "And then there's that."

"Don't play with me, Tony. You already knew that."

"Yeah, I know."

"Do you know who my parents are?"

"Yeah. Of course."

"Will you tell me? Dave said my mom died when I was a baby. But my dad is still alive. Tony, Dave said that he left before I was born."

He really didn't want to be the one to tell her. "Look, Echo, I don't-"

"Please, Tony, I wanna know. Even if I can't meet him, I need to know."

Of course she did. Starks were like terriers. Small, smart, and more likely to be thrown into a wall than to let go.

"It's me."

"What?"

"I'm your dad."

"You?"

"Don't be so surprised, Echo. I'm an okay person. Your parents let you visit me unsupervised." Tony winces. "Although that might change if they find out that you ran away from home to end up here. Where you spent what, five hours by yourself?"

She shrugs. "About that, I guess." She frowns and circles around him. Appraising him? Looking for faults? Looking for a tag that says 'I made Darcy'? "Yeah, you're not really dad material."

Apparently the answer was D, all of the above. On the other hand, Tony couldn't really blame her. "Yeah, that was the consensus at the time. I've mentioned Obie, my business partner, right?"

Darcy thinks a moment but nods. "Yeah, your god-father, right?"

"Right." Obie wasn't really a great father-figure either. Only marginally better at it than his absentee biological father. Don't go there. Tony is not Howard Stark. Will never be Howard Stark. For better or worse. "Anyway, Obie convinced me that it's be best for you after your mother died if I signed away my parental rights. Meaning that I wouldn't have custody of you if something happened to her. Or rather so that you could be adopted by Dave and Maddy."

Darcy stares him down for a moment. All four feet of her ten-year-old self. "He tricked you."

Damn, as annoying as it always was when she called him out, he can't help beaming at how smart she is. "Well, yeah, I guess there's that." Tony shrugs. "He took advantage of my laziness. Slipped it in to my tedious paperwork. The kind I never used to read. I've been getting better though, I promise."

Darcy nods. "Okay." She narrows her eyes at him. "So, do I call you dad?"

Oh, fuck no. He can't do that to Dave or Maddy. Not after they'd been so great about him hanging around for years. So he just shrugs and shakes his head. "Nah, Dave's done pretty great job. I think he's earned that title way more than I ever could."

She smiles sadly at him. "Tony, he lied. And you're not that horrible."

Tony barks out his most self-deprecating laugh. "Kid, who do you think we are? We're Starks! Our legacy is misdirection, obfuscation, and explosions. The only honest thing we deal in is the explosions. We don't begrudge others their white lies. Especially when they're only lying to protect us."

"Protect us?" She still doesn't get who Tony is. Well, it's not like Dave or Maddy have ever let her read tabloids or, well, she wouldn't want to read business rags.

"Echo, my name is Tony Stark. I'm one of the richest, most well-known men in America if not the world. Most places I go, I get hounded by crowds of reporters. Dave adopting you protected you from that fame."

And the kidnappings. After a while Tony got over them, but he didn't want Darcy to have to do that. He didn't want her left alone calling after him. Echoing his childhood fears. He would write the story better this time. No staring into ponds.

"I wouldn't mind being famous." Darcy smiles at him. "Might be fun."

He grins at her. Sometimes, but only sometimes. "Ah, little imp, you say that now, but fame is a fickle mistress. With teeth. Vicious, vicious teeth. Like the big, bad wolf. All ready to eat up innocent little girls in red dresses and spit out evil witches."

Darcy shakes head at him. "I'm pretty sure that's not how that story goes."

He waves a hand at her. "Don't bother me with details." He tilts his head. Since she knows who he is now, there's really no reason he can't. "Hey, we're gonna call Dave to make sure I don't get charged with kidnapping you, okay? But after that, do you wanna see my basement?"

"The basement you disappear into to make toys?"

He snaps and points at her. "That's the one."

She bounces and bites her lip. "Yes." She narrows her eyes. "Are you going to make me do math things again?"

"You're great at it. I don't see why you hate it so much."

"Because it's homework, and as a child I am conditioned to hate homework automatically."

Tony shrugs. He never got the point of people assigning him work. He just did whatever he wanted. Very Montessori and all that. "So you make your own math games. Teach yourself higher level stuff turn that in and sit back as they gape at you. Turn the work into something practical and make puzzles."

She rolls her eyes and gets up to go to his kitchen. "Whatever, call Dave."

Tony smiles at his daughter. His Echo. He was gonna make sure that he took care of her and never let her fade.


	5. Daedelus, the Cretan Inventor

_October 2005..._

"Hey! Dr. Banner! Wait up!"

Bruce sighs. Undergrads were a thing he was never going to get used to. Especially the perky ones with a million questions.

Whatever. Bruce stops to let his, hmmm, biochem student. "Hi, Miss Lewis, right?"

She boggles at him a moment and then rallies. "Huh, yeah. Wow, I wasn't expecting you to know my name. I mean, that class has at least one, one-twenty students."

Not all of them ask twenty questions per hour-and-a-half class. Ever since that first week showed a definite pattern, he'd been keeping track of it. That was her steady average. But he just smiles. "I'm good with names."

"Huh." She leans closer to peer into his eyes. "That's weird for a science person."

Bruce counts to ten and reminds himself that the science department wants students from other disciplines to participate in their courses. That to even get to biochem, this girl had to at least test out of about five science courses. That to maim her, verbally or physically, could get him fired. Or at least reprimanded.

And he certainly couldn't afford to be fired. Not with the way his research was going.

So he sighs and shrugs. "I guess."

Lewis pokes his face. "Yep, you're real. Cool. You know, you're very 'Clark Kent' meets 'Doc Emmett Brown'."

Not reacting. _Not_ reacting. She's just a little eccentric. It's fine. It's _fine_. "Did you need me for something, Miss Lewis?"

She snaps and points a finger. "Right!" She digs in her bag and pulls out a manila envelope. "My project. I won't be in class tomorrow. Going out of town early for a family thing." She waves her explanation away. "Anyway not important. Project is finished and in your hands. Please don't lose it. I can e-mail it, but you wanted a hardcopy, so there."

He wants to glare at the envelope a little. Now he has to go back to his office and put away the damn thing instead of just heading for his lab. He doesn't have time to be teaching, but the university insisted for this semester. Well, if he has to head back to his office, he'll get waylaid by his TA anyway, so he smiles and asks, "When're you leaving? If it's not right away I can try to grade it before you leave and let you know."

She bites her lip and rubs her neck. "Uh, tomorrow at one. But I'm pretty much booked until then because I'm missing the rest of the week and part of next week. It's not like you're the easiest professor to get a hold of." She looks like she wants to eye roll at that, but she doesn't.

He nods. He rarely holds office hours. "So, you don't mind waiting until you get back?"

"I'm pretty sure that this project isn't even going to be the last thing on my mind this weekend. I'm going to visit my dad. And he's taking me to a race."

"A race?"

She shrugs, but she's grinning and almost bouncing. "It's a big deal to him. He has money on one of the participants."

"Ah, what kind of race?"

"Uh, cars."

"So, NASCAR?" Why is he still asking questions? Bruce wants to rush off to his office, so that even if his TA catches him, he'll still be able to get to his lab. She already said she didn't need it graded right away. It's just that something about the way she's been asking questions makes him feel a little like if she's missing classes it must be important.

"Um, no. It's a smaller circuit." Something about the way she says it is off like she's laughing at the idea of her dad watching NASCAR.

"Oh, like drag racing?"

"Not really." This time she doesn't bother holding back the eye roll. "Look, Dr. Banner, thanks for the offer, but I need to turn in a few more things today. See you next week. You rock, dude."

"Right." And as she walks away, he shakes his head. It's not like he'll never see her again. She'll be back next week.

* * *

And there she is. Right in front, where she's packing up her things after the class. Bruce has been fidgeting through his lecture. She hadn't asked any questions all class. It was weird. So he drops to sit on the edge of the auditorium's stage. "So, Miss Darcy, how was the race?"

She drops a notebook into her bag and lets out a happy sigh. "Oh man, Dr. B. It was the greatest. Dad's car won. I mean, he was positive it would, but I wasn't so sure. But it was the greatest. Junior totally annihilated Stanley." She goes back to packing up with a smile.

"Stanley?" He really can't help his curiousity around this girl. He knows that though she's pretty, he's not attracted to her. It's just that even though she asks too many questions. They're the right questions, like she's trying to guide his lectures to make sure that he doesn't miss anything.

"Oh, yeah. That was the robot that came in second place."

"Robot?"

"Oh. That's right. I went down to the Mojave Desert for the DARPA race."

Bruce doesn't say anything for a minute. "You went to see the DARPA Grand Challenge? To see your father's car race? Which won."

Darcy grins at him. "Yep."

"They don't sell tickets to that. Your father had to have been involved in the construction of the robot." Bruce narrows his eyes. "The Stark Industries robot."

"Uh, yeah. My dad works at SI. I've been an unofficial mascot all my life."

"You're dad works at Stark Industries? And he worked on their DARPA robot? I would've thought that they would've had Tony Stark work on that. He is one of the premier experts in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence."

"Oh, um." Darcy bites her lip and shuffles her notes. Odd. "Well, he was supposed to and he did most of the original work for the AI, but then he got bored, so my dad got tapped to finish the project."

"Huh, I've met Stark. The way he talks about AI, I wouldn't have thought that any project involving them or robotics would be boring to him." In fact when Bruce had met him, his new AI was all that Stark had talked about. Darcy's story doesn't quite make sense.

"Oh yeah?" She grins, a departure from the nervousness of a second ago. "Yeah, I've heard stories about how he talks about Jarvis and the bots he has in his workshop."

"Jarvis?" The name seems familiar, but engineering wasn't his field, and he'd only been half listening those years ago.

"Yep, Just A Rather Very Intelligent System." She smiles at the face he makes and shrugs. "It's what Tony tells people that JARVIS stands for."

"In other words, his main AI project. Why qualify that he only tells people that's what it stands for?"

"Because I've done my research and Tony Stark is unexpectedly sentimental at times."

"Really?"

"When he was a little boy, his parents employed a bulter named Edwin Jarvis, good man who cared for a small boy who would often fall by the wayside in a world of glitz and glamor. Everyone knows the story of the car accident that killed Howard and Maria Stark. Hardly anyone knows about the man who was driving the car. Mr. Edwin Jarvis died on impact, so there's that. But Tony was left an orphan with the weight of the world chasing his shoulders and without a man who was closer to him than his father. He may have already been nineteen, but he was by no means grown." By the time she finishes her rant, her eyes are sparking and she's tilting her chin at him and it's all remarkably familiar.

Bruce grins at her. Oh god, this kid is so not hiding well. "Done your research, huh?"

Darcy gasps. It seems to hit her all at once that she should not know any of that. "I, uh, I did a project on him for psych class. You know on how crappy history can lead to crappy coping mechanisms which he totally- He's a classic narcissist and he's almost got a Oedipal complex. Ridiculous bag of neuroses and all that ego." She darts glances between him and her bag. "Shit, you're not buying any of this." She drops into a chair and crosses her arms.

"Yeah, not really. So, is he gonna have me killed now?"

"You plan on selling me out to the press?"

He hops off the stage and shrugs. "Not particularly. I have a good salary. Besides I'm currently kind of working for the military, and he has better," He pauses to reconsider, "Well, maybe not better connections, but certainly more connections."

"Oh, okay. Then there's a pretty good chance that he won't bother you. I've talked about you to him, and he said he vaguely remembered thinking that you were an adorably cliched puppy."

"Um, what?"

"Yeah, I don't think he knew what he meant either." She scuffs a shoes against the floor. "So, you're working for the military? I thought you were working for Culver."

"You sound surprised that a university with any sort of proximity to the capital has military contracts or that a professor here would have a military grant."

"Oh, right. It's just that this is so far from the context I typically encounter the military, I forget."

"Yes, I imagine it's nice to pretend they don't exist, but aren't you a poly-sci major?"

She shrugs. "It was kind of a crapshoot. Tony was being annoying about me going to MIT, so I was being mean. I pretty much already had the majority of an associate's from the classes I took while in high school. In more science-y things, too. But I wanted to take classes out of any science discplines. I'm only taking your course because people said you were a cool teacher."

"I'm not sure anyone would really know that I hadn't been teaching much since I got my most recent project."

She leans forward. "With Thunderbolt, right?"

He sort of freezes but then relaxes. "Tony tell you that? He's not supposed to know."

"He ranted about it really." She shrugs. "That's actually where I heard your name. He didn't say what it was, but he was going on about how the general had usurped one of the great nuclear physicists of the age into a ridiculous grail search."

"Good to know he holds such respect for me."

She laughs. "You're joking, but it's better than anything I've ever heard him say about anyone in a professional capacity. He blames Thunderbolt, not you." She narrows her eyes. "He might even blame Dr. Ross before he blames you. He looked up her picture and actually paused his ranting."

Bruce can picture that. From what he remembers of Stark, the man was a dog. He tries not to change his posture in the face of the archetypal playboy of the Western World having shown the mildest interest in his girlfriend. "Well, she didn't really have to work that hard to convince me. I liked the premise of the project."

"Recreating the pinnacle of human perfection?"

"What? Oh, no, it's not really that similar to Project Rebirth. It's more about protecting the soldiers than trying to improve them."

Darcy gives him a hard look and bites her lips. "Are you sure, Banner?"

Bruce laughs. "Thunderbolt's an ass. And I know that fact better than most, but, really, we're trying to protect soldiers from rad-poisoning. T-bolt's not a scientist, even if he's in charge of them, and he can only direct the research so much."

"If you're sure. Be careful. I like you and I'm pretty sure Tony does, too. He doesn't call just anyone a puppy."

"Thank him for me. Though I'm pretty sure I should be offended."

"I wouldn't worry about it."

"See you later, Darcy."

"Buh-bye, Brucey." She kisses a finger and presses his forehead before striding out with her bags.

* * *

In his lab, Bruce thinks about Darcy Lewis and Tony Stark. They're a lot alike, but he thinks that Darcy shows more of what she feels. He can't help but think that might not be a good thing. Then he shakes his head and gets back to work. There's a review coming up soon, and the next few tests are important. He snorts at himself every test is important.

Things have been going slowly. And as far as the military is concerned slow is tantamount to failure.

He has to finish faster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: Guess what happens next. Poor Brucey. This chapter was written a little haphazardly. I wrote the first half a while ago and then came back to the rest but only had the first few lines of dialogue written. 
> 
> And after I reread that part, I couldn't figure out why Bruce would ask about the race. And then boom, his weird curiousity about her and also the way he keeps track of how many questions. Except Darcy is still way too excited about the fact that JUNIOR won the race (Just Unbeatable Navigation Independent Optimal Racer, originally JR for Just Race, then Just Unbeatable Never Imitated Operative Racer; I can't figure out which I like better; okay fine he was originally just JJ for JARVIS Jr. but that was no fun; I really want another J-word but I can't think of one; wow, this is kind of an AN for the AN). 
> 
> And I know that Stanford actually won the race, but   
> Tony doesn't actually exist, does he? And please, if he did, he totally would have won that race. 
> 
> But whatever, so the only reason Bruce is so uncharitable towards her in the first part is b/c he really just wants to go to his 'real' job and he's grumpy. But I got hung up on the above parenthetical and lost my train of thought, sooooo here.  
> And again not sure I like the title, or who it's referring to for that matter.
> 
> ~S


	6. Icarus, Son of Daedelus

_May 2006..._

"Hey, kiddo, why aren't we wishing me a happy birthday?" Tony asks over his shoulder from where he's fiddling with Dummy's joints.

Darcy shrugs and pokes at her ridiculously expensive piece of cake. She doesn't say anything, and danger, Will Robinson, that is never a good sign.

"Are you still upset about Banner?"

She deliberately sets her plate and fork down and turns to face him. "They pushed him into testing it too soon, didn't they?"

Probably, but Tony doesn't actually know because once Ross had pulled up the archived data on a certain soldier, Tony ran far and fast from that project. But that's not what she wants to hear. "Echo, you know as well as I do that they may have pressured him and threatened his funding, but he did the experiment anyway. He started i.t He made wings of wax and flew too high. So, he fell just like Icarus of myth. Yeah, they hung him out to dry, but he made his bed."

"Enough with the clichés," she snaps at him.

"Yeah, okay. That was bad, but it doesn't make it any less true."

"He's the only one beside Obie and Rhodey that knew. Granted he's probably got -"

"Wait, what?" Banner knew what? That could not be what it sounded like.

Darcy freezes. Another bad sign and oh, man, that was exactly what it sounded like. "Um, I kind of told him about Junior and the DARPA. Then, he started talking about you and asking about Jay and I got a little overenthusiastic about talking his namesake."

"So not only does he know that your my daughter, but he knows I'm a sap?" Tony fully recognizes that he'd just whined at her, thank you very much, but that was so beside the point. There was a federal fugitive out there that knew some of the secrets he played so close to the vest that they were practically tattooed on his skin. A federal fugitive that turned into a veritable monster when angry or startled.

"Well, yeah, there's that." Damn his genes and their natural tendency to flippancy.

"Sometimes I hate you." Because really Banner knowing his personal thingies was not a thing that he needed.

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever. You told Rhodey."

"That is a blatant lie. Rhodey told me." Because there was that one time that Darce had been waiting for him outside the hanger, and Rhodey had seen her, and there was this whole situation where she'd snarked at him, and he told her to get lost, and then she smirked, and Rhodey turned around to glare at Tony and asked why Tony hadn't asked him to be the godfather because of reasons. And Jesus, what was his life, so they'd just spent the weekend together so Rhodey could get to know Darcy.

"Yeah, I guess he did." She smiles obviously remembering that weekend very differently because Rhodey had no boundaries and Darcy had apparently been old enough for MIT stories if not Cuban ones. Rhodey still hadn't forgiven him for the Cuban ones. She shakes of the nostalgia of Tony-embarassment and gives him that look. "Tony, is there anything you can do for him?"

Tony really can't help it. He huffs out a short laugh and shakes his head. "Oh, Echo, you're under the mistaken idea that he actually needs my help. Your prof is a smart man. And you know, when he's small and pinkish, that man is only remarkable when doing science. Very bland, handsome but not movie star pretty. He'll blend as much as he can, and he'll survive."

"But Tony, he shouldn't have to." She's almost desperate. Banner must have been a fun teacher.

"Maybe not, kiddo, but he wouldn't take my help even if I could offer it. In fact, it could attract the wrong type of attention for him if I tracked him down."

"Oh," she breathes out the word. The idea hadn't occurred to her in the throes of worry. "That would suck."

"Yeah, because trust me, Banner is one man I wouldn't mind hiring." And he really wouldn't because that little dorky man was all types of smart, and from what Tony'd heard and could remember, that man even did people well. Which was a definite rarity in the realm of science and engineering.

"Even with his new 'disability'?" Darcy asks, raising a mocking eyebrow at him.

"Please, Echo, this guy was ballsy enough to try this crap out on himself, so while I think he could probably do with a course in lab procedure I deeply respect his dedication." Not to mention, that even if he thought he was trying to protect soldiers from rad poisoning, he'd almost gotten the process of making a super-soldier right. And even if he couldn't stand thinking about the Soldier and Howard, Dr. Abraham Erskine was an amazing man. And Bruce Banner had almost been the first successful reproduction.

"Besides 'caution is for the weak'?"

"Indubitably." Because caution was one thing when being responsible (which Tony hated), but when caution got in the way of actual progress, it was worse than useless.

And Tony intended to have that epithet carved on his grave marker. 'Caution is for the weak,' indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: After sketched this chapter out, I realized in 'Daedelus' that I'd mentioned that both Obadiah and Rhodey knew, but that I'd never said when Rhodey found out or how. That's why there's so much Tony stream of consciousness in this chapter (also b/c in my head Tony's always got at least 2 convos going on, one w/ actual ppl and one w/ himself). So go look at the fourth work in this series. Pleeeeeeease. 
> 
> And comment, do that, too. 
> 
> ~S


	7. Hades, God of the Underworld and Wealth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: This chapter might be a little different than most other ones.

_May 2009..._

Darcy got a call last night. Obie warned her not to watch the news.

The problem is she's never been good at following orders and especially not Obie's. She's never really liked him even before Tony told her the whole story about how Obie had machinated her mother's 'retirement'. She just couldn't summon up any fondness for the man that always gazed at her almost hungrily, which just, no.

So now she's wishing that just this once she'd listened to the old goat. Because then she wouldn't be watching Tony's transport explode. Wouldn't be reading the ticker-tape at the bottom of the screen, "KABUL, AFGHANISTAN. Terrorists attack SI transport, Tony Stark MIA, presumed dead."

The words loop through her mind. Presumed dead. Goddamnit.

And then her phone rings and she scrambles blindly for it. "What?"

"You watched anyway." Obadiah. And that's so not a question. He knows her well enough to know...

"Sonuvabitch. You knew I wouldn't listen. You knew, and you wanted to make sure I saw."

"Not true." His voice is icy as she's ever heard it and that condemns him more than an admission ever would. "I wanted to spare you, but I knew you might not listen. I wanted to make sure you were okay."

"You fucking liar." Her eyes are dry only because tears are useless sentiment. Tony always told her that when she needed to cry she should do it where the only ones who could see or hear her were those she trusted. And she doesn't think there's ever been anyone she trusted less than Obadiah Stane in this moment. "I don't know what you wanted to accomplish but--"

"I'd watch yourself, little girl," Obadiah's snarl cuts through her indignation. "You are not nearly as experienced in this arena as you think you are. You may not be publicly outed as Tony's daughter, but there are always those crackpot conspiracy theorists. You've been seen with him on occasion. It wouldn't be hard to cause an accident."

Darcy barks out a harsh laugh. "No, it's not, is it? And you're exceptional at them, aren't you, Obadiah? I did a project on Tony Stark for a psych project. I researched that accident. It was weird, but not weird enough. Then there was my mother. What was the point of that? To distract him with me?" She tuts at him. "That may prove to backfire on you, Stane. I'm a poly-sci major with a minor in mechanical engineering. I have documentation that I'm the biological daughter of Anthony Stark and a will that bequeaths his SI stocks to me on his death."

She pauses. Oh god, this is dangerous, but she's sick of this man, and he just threatened her, and she is severely pissed. "I guarantee that I would have you ousted within the week if you force my hand."

"Don't threaten me, Miss _Lewis._ " He's emphasizing her surname as if that obscures her right to call herself Tony's daughter. Please, Tony filed that will in 1992. "You might find the water too deep."

"Perhaps, Mr. Stane. But I highly doubt it."

"Fine." He chuckles, as if her thinking that she could possibly win against him is _so_ ridiculous. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

"Never. And Stane enjoy your position while it lasts." She hisses and hangs up. She glares at the touch screen, wishing desperately that she still had a landline, so that she could've slammed down the receiver.

She stands and paces. Dammit, that was stupid. Worth it and satisfying but so incredibly stupid. She stops as the worst occurs to her. The accidents. Yes, she'd suspected about those for a while. But this was a step further. "Oh, god. It was him. He got Tony abducted. Presumed dead." She drops to the floor.

"I don't have any proof. I can't tell anyone or he'll make good on his threats. But I can't let him keep control of SI. He'll destroy everything. Possibly literally."

And then her phone interrupts her again. She glares at it and checks the caller ID. And her stomach drops for the what feels like the twentieth time that morning.

Oh, god. Rhodey. She hadn't even thought. He'd been in Afghanistan with Tony. She'd totally forgotten.

"Rhodey?" Her voice is shaking and, dammit, she didn't have time for that.

"Hey, kid," Rhodey says, so damn tired it carries over the scratchy line across the Middle East, past the Mediterranean Sea, and over the Atlantic Ocean. "Have you heard?"

"It's running on every station. It's like he's royalty or something. Does that make me a princess. Because, no. I saw those Anne Hathaway movies and that is not a thing that's happening."

The laugh that crackles over the line is broken and sad. "Well, shit. I had hoped to be able to spare you seeing that. What were you even doing watching the news?"

"I'm fine. What happened?" She ignores his question about the news. That had been part of why she'd been suspicious of Stane. She never watched the news. She hated all the lies and misdirection and was very vocal to anyone around that she never watched the news unless she had to.

Rhodey's too tired to notice though because he just sighs. "It was an ambush. And then there was a missile, and Tony was gone."

It doesn't compute for an entire minute. She just can't parse anything beyond gone. She can hear Rhodey talking over the line, but nothing's getting through. "He's really dead? It's confirmed?"

"God, no, Darce. There wasn't a body. And while that's not that great because he's not here. And he's probably hurt based on the amount of blood on the ground but not enough that he's positively bled out. And they took him for a reason. No one else was taken. So there's a really good chance that he's alive and even getting medical attention, for given values of-"

"Thank you, Jim."

He stops and catches his breath. "No need, sweets. He's my friend too. Even if he did force me to endure the desert sun with a hangover from hell."

She's shocked into laughter. "Oh, Rhodey, you know better than that. Did he have the stripper flight attendants?"

Rhodey's sigh crackles especially loud. "Of course he did. I don't really remember much of that, but I remember them being very beautiful. Tony knows how to have a good time."

Darcy sighs. She shouldn't ask. It could endanger Rhodey. Military accidents are so easy to stage. She shouldn't ask, but really she is a Stark. "Hey, you call Pepper or Obie, yet?"

His nickname tastes like bile, but she pushes through it. As much as she's never liked him, she's hardly ever called him Stane. It would be too obvious.

"Nope, you were my first call. I think Obie was notified, but that was a few hours ago. Some general made the formal call to him as the COO of SI. But I was gonna call Pep after I talked to you."

"A few hours ago?"

"Yeah. Early this morning."

Hours after he called her to warn her off watching the news. Talk about showing your hand. He wanted her to know. It was another warning. Well. She grins, fuck that noise.

"Okay." And, yeah, she knows there was something wrong with her voice, but she can't help the savage grin she knows is filling her face.

"What else, kid?" He's asking because that's what people do. He can't see her. He doesn't know what she does. It's just the done thing. "Darcy, what is it?"

Or maybe not.

"Nothing, Colonel. Just worn out."

"Darcy..." Yeah, calling him that was a gamble.

"No, really. I've got this, Jim. Go find my dad. Focus on that. I'm fine," she assures him and hangs up before he can argue.

Obadiah threatened her by bragging. He would live to regret that.

* * *

_June 2009..._

Tony Stark has been missing for one month.

Darcy Lewis has been twenty for five days and is starting to get pissed off. She can't go to the SI facility in L.A. because she would out herself and bring about her own personal apocalypse.

Stane was extremely vague.

And she can't call Rhodey because he's just a little busy. Just, you know, scouring the Afghani desert for a single man.

Because where the fuck was Tony? That asshole had been MIA for a month. He should've had enough time to MacGyver his way out of whatever mess was in Afghanistan.

Rhodey called her yesterday. There's just too much desert to search. There was just too much blood on the scene. And the Air Force is making noise like they're going to call him back.

Obadiah had sent her a message the week before that SI is going to be declaring Tony dead within the month. She'd told Rhodey, and he'd gone cold and silent like he wasn't sure what he thought anymore. Like he was starting believe that Tony was gone for good.

Darcy'd hung up on him again. She doesn't and won't let anyone tell her differently.

So here she is sitting in an internet café in San Diego. She's checking and double-checking the code. Yep, it works.

She creates a new e-mail address. And then she starts typing.

**FROM:** **PANDORA (via starkmailer . org)**

**TO:** **HERA (vpotts via starkindustries . org)**

**Ms. Potts,**

**I understand this may seem like an odd request. I need you to stop Mr. Stane and the board from declaring Mr. Stark dead. I cannot and will not accept that he's dead without physical proof. You know as well as I do that there is more to Tony than his playboy-of-the-Western-world persona. He is alive. Do not let anyone tell you any different.**

**Obadiah is not what he appears.**

Darcy watches the cursor blink accusingly back at her. It's not like she's signing it. Obadiah will likely never even see it. Besides he's awful at hacking, so he'd never find her at the end of this message.

On the other hand, Pepper might not trust this. She might think this is a cruel joke. She might show it to Obadiah, and he could play the wounded friend and twist it to convince the board to accelerate the timeframe of declaring Tony dead faster.

Darcy glares at the neon signs around her. She knows this plan isn't foolproof, but Tony is alive and will come back. But if Stane gets Tony declared dead there's a chance he might not be able to do anything about Stane's betrayal.

She sighs and deletes the last line. Instead she types:

**I haven't lost hope and neither should you. I know he's trying to come back to us. Just make sure his coming back is still an option.**

**-Pandora**

And before she can doubt herself or think better of it, she activates HELEN and sends the e-mail.

She sits back and glares at the cheery 'Message successfully sent!' screen, with its dancing envelope until some skinny kid asks if she needs any help. She ignores him and logs out abruptly before grabbing her stuff and storming out.

Hopefully that would be enough for Pepper. Hopefully she'd keep the e-mail private and just do what Darcy asked.

She sighs. Well, she'll find out soon enough.

* * *

Darcy loves Pepper fucking Potts. Because that woman is a genius. So far, Pepper has held three press conferences, has gone on two morning talk shows, and has given one interview to the L.A. fucking Times. All saying that the staff of SI has full faith that Tony was coming back that to say otherwise was just ill-wishing.

She made no mention of having him declared dead. She made no mention of Stane. She told everyone that she had every faith Tony would come back. And she just kept repeating it. She kept on message and whenever someone asked how much longer it would take to convince her that Tony was dead, she just let them have it.

She would narrow her eyes and glare. "Excuse me, who are you? Have you spent anytime with Tony Stark not in the capacity of a party or press conference? Are you equipped to speak on his work ethic? No. I have worked for Tony Stark for over eight years. I know him better than almost anyone. I refuse to believe he's dead. I will continue to refuse to believe that he's dead until someone produces a corpse."

Darcy was laughing about that for weeks after see saw that. God, she needed to meet Pepper Potts. She's been e-mailing that woman every other day, but there're no replies, and it would never be the same as meeting her face-to-face.

Darcy wonders if she should mention Stane. But no, that would just endanger Pepper. And is the last thing Darcy wants at this point.

* * *

_July 2009..._

And now Darcy is being followed. What is her life? There's an accountant type man not even trying to be sneaky as he keeps pace with her. She's pretty sure that if he didn't want her to see him she wouldn't.

And she's pretty sure that she's really tired of being unsneaky around her. So, yeah, this is gonna happen. She stops, turns, and glares.

Mr. Accountant stops and stares dispassionately.

"What?"

And no response. What an ass.

Darcy snorts. "Well, do I at least get a coffee out of this lovely stalking experience?" She gives him her most scathing glare to no avail.

"Of course, Miss Lewis." And the only thing about this man that isn't bland and nonthreatening is the fact that he obviously knows her name.

"Wow, that's not at all creepy." And he just walks off. Darcy rolls her eyes. "Dude, you are such stereotype--" She breaks off as he stops by an unmarked black van. "Wow, seriously? This is a thing? Why is this a thing? Are you seriously about to disappear me? Why are you trying to disappear me? I so--"

"Miss Lewis," he interrupts, opening the rear passenger door. "Get in the van."

"Asshole." She wrinkles her nose. Because really this is so unnecessary.

He climbs in after her and hands her a plain paper cup.

She takes it and sniffs. "Iocaine powder?" She takes a long. And hot damn! That is excellent coffee. "I thought the hero was supposed to poison the Sicilian?"

Mr Account-slash-Vizzini sighs. "Miss Lewis--"

"Or am I Inigo Montoya? Hah!" She lowers her voice. "You killed my father. Prepare to die."

Vizzini's blank face freezes. The expression doesn't so much change as much as it manifests as mild indigestion. "Your father, Miss Lewis?"

"Why are we in a black van, Vizzini?"

"My name -"

She waves him off. "Nope, don't care. If you tell me, you'll have to kill me." She smiles at the slight tic in his jaw.

"Really, Miss Lewis, who would you tell?"

"Well, I think the reason I'm in this van is that I've been anonymously e-mailing Virginia Potts."

He narrows his eyes. "Yes. About that. Why?"

"I really don't want Tony being declared dead."

"Why?"

"Because Obadiah Stane is an idiot."

"Really. I talked to him yesterday and he seemed very smart."

"Oh, he's excellent at seeming smart. It's just actually being smart that he has difficult with."

"How do you know Mr. Stane?"

"He threatened to have me killed."

That actually managed to crack some of his calm. "Excuse me?"

Darcy rolls her eyes, again. "Look, Vizzini, who do you think I am?"

"Darcy Lewis, adopted daughter of attorney Dave Lewis who took guardianship of you after you mother died when you were three months old. Biological mother was Marie Lewis. No record for biological father. You grew up in San Diego, California." He sounds like he's reading from a file.

Darcy smiles. "All true. Anything else?"

"Tony Stark is your biological father."

She purses her lips and nods. "There's also that."

"You're remarkably well adjusted for someone who spent much of her childhood around Stark."

She grins at him. "Yeah, well. The salient point of that sentence was that there were times I spent away from him."

He inclines his head. "My name is Agent Phil Coulson with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division."

She stares at him. "Really?" Nothing. "You made the name an acronym for SHIELD, and then you still use the full name. That's a little insane."

He grins. "We're working on it."

"Whatever." She laughs. "So what can I do you for, Phil?"

"Well, it's more of what I can do for you. Especially if Stane has threatened you."

"Oh, that was months ago. It's all good now. He was an ass. He wanted to see if I would fold. I won't, and now he knows that."

"He told me that Tony wasn't doing much inventing, but that he would mostly do the big picture work."

Darcy's not even sure if the agent is still talking. Stane was trying to minimize Tony's use. "He was lying." She snorts. "Tony is actually really bad at delegating. The projects Tony takes he designs down to production specs. He reviews all the weapons projects that he doesn't directly work on as well."

"Well, that's not good."

"You think he'll give up state secrets? No, he's tougher than he or anyone else will ever give himself credit for. Plus, he doesn't like being told what to do."

"You think he'd endanger himself to spite his captors?"

"Oh, without a doubt. My father's a selfish, self-centered ass, but he's a stubborn selfish, self-centered ass."

"Hmmm, but how much of that is hero-worship for the man who helped raise you?"

"No, Agent, Tony is no hero, but that doesn't mean he's a weak or bad man."

"Strong enough to endure torture? Good enough to resist threats to his life or person?"

She just grins at him. Because fuck him.

"Miss Lewis. What do you know?"

"in May, Tony Stark went to a weapons demo with Lieutenant Colonel Rhodes in Kabul, Afghanistan after which his convoy was attacked, and now he's missing assumed dead."

"Which is not an assumption--"

"No, I'm not going to believe Tony is dead until I see physical fucking proof."

"Anything else?"

Darcy contemplates his stony expression. He might believe her, but what could he do? "Stane is a jerk." Stop it, stop it. There's no proof. He can't do anything with it. "He called the next day and threatened me. Very traumatic."

"Horrible. how did he threaten you?"

"Very obliquely. Was SHIELD around when Tony's parents died?"

"Yes, Howard was one of the founders."

"Hmmm. Okay."

He actually sighs. "What?"

"It's just weird."

"What is?"

"That no one in your super-secret special awesome organization thought the Stark's 'accident' was suspicious."

"It was a car accident. Stane was across the world."

"Yeah, well, there's this thing people can do called scheduling."

"This isn't helping."

"I'm sorry, but you still haven't explained what I'm doing here."

"We needed to know who was sending those messages. And to what purpose."

"Oh, right, because telling someone not to let their friend be declared dead has such malicious intent."

"Yes, I will be speaking to out analysts about that."

Darcy smirks at him. "They didn't know I was Tony's daughter, did they?"

"No."

"Did you? Before meeting me I mean?"

"No."

"Do you think-"

"As far as I know, Stark has done on admirable job of hiding you, and no one in SHIELD or any other government agency thinks you're related to him."

"He is good, isn't he?" Her face falls a bit. "It was originally Stane though. Stane sent my mother away, and then arrange my adoption when she died."

"He didn't want the publicity?"

"Right. Tony didn't find out about me until after I was adopted."

Agent Vizzini just stared at her.

"What?"

"Stane did all that without telling Stark?"

Ah, there's that suspicion and paranoia secret agents are known for. Good, this one's with it. Now to be purposely annoying and vague. "Hmmm, do you actually look like an accountant in you every day life?"

"Understood, Miss Lewis." And with that the van stops. Coulson opens the door to show her uncle's house.

She glares out at it for minute. Then she climbs out. "Gee, thanks, Mr. Coulson. I had a really good time." She calls out more to the neighborhood than the occupants.

He just slams the door at her, and the van drives off.

"Yeah, fuck you too." She smiles at the disappearing van. "Go save my dad, Secret Agent Man. Don't make me have to kill you."


	8. Hephaestus, God of Fire and Forge-Work

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here's the rest of Iron Man and the lead-in to Thor. Gotta say for the majority of this chap Darcy is not best pleased. Everything is Obie's fault... As per usual.

_August 2009..._

Darcy's been getting calls from both sides of the search. Rhodey's called whenever he could and Coulson's nagged her constantly about what Rhodey's been telling her.

But then, at the end of August, everything changes.

Darcy turns on the news one day to see Tony sitting on the edge of a stage with his arm in a sling and wiping his mouth clean of a burger. And oh, God, he's alive! Her relief lasts all of five seconds before she scowls. She's going to kill everyone. She should have been one of the first calls. For over a month and a half, she has been the first call, but now Tony was back, leaving Darcy to be put on the back burner. Those assholes just went on with their press conference like life is back to normal.

Well, fuck them with a plastic spoon.

She shuts off the TV to Tony running his mouth about responsibility. She glares at it for a minute but then pulls out her phone and starts dialing.

It's picked up on the tenth ring. "Um, hello?"

"Hi, Dr. Foster?"

"Yeah?" The woman on the other end seems baffled that there is actually a conversation happening right now.

"I'm Darcy Lewis. I started applying for the position as your assistant, but a family emergency came up. The emergency has been resolved and now everything's fine. I wanted to see if I could still apply for next semester?"

"Um." Across the phone line, Darcy can hear the distinct sound of paper being ransacked. "Lewis, Lewis, Lewis... Right! Uh, yeah. You should be able to. In fact, I could use some help this semester, too. I'm sure you need some-"

"This semester would be great." Darcy winces after her assertion comes out a little too fast. "I just really need to get back to school. The crisis is over so there's nothing I need to do, and I'm at a loose end."

"Right. Was there anything I needed to do? Anything we needed to do to get you, um... squared away?"

Oh, she's that type of scientist. "No, Dr. Foster, I'm all squared away or at least I will be by the time I'm officially working for you."

"Uh, okay. That's, uh, great. When can you start?"

"I'm in San Diego right now, but I can be back within the next few days."

"Okay, okay, good. Was there anything else we needed to talk about?"

"My duties?"

"Um, probably collating data, grading papers, holding review sessions? How's that sound?"

"Great. I'm a poly-sci major but if you give me the material they'll be tested over I should be able to hold decent reviews. I'll come by your office two days from now that sound good?"

"Um, make it my lab, and you've got a deal."

"Great." And just like that Darcy has found something to take her mind off the inevitable situation in Malibu.

* * *

_October 2009..._

It takes Tony a lot longer than Darcy would've thought to realize she'd moved her junk out of the Malibu house.

As he's calling her after ignoring her for two months, she stares at the phone and the very I'm-hiding-from-the-paps-standing-two-feet-from-me picture she'd taken of him when he'd tossed the phone at her. She really doesn't want to answer. Something's been going on in Malibu and with SI in general. She's pretty sure there was a report of Stark-tech in Afghanistan. She's pretty sure it was on both sides of the altercation. Darcy doesn't know how to feel about the Tony pulling SI out of the weapons biz. Except that it doesn't really look like he has.

And she should have called about Stane right when he came back. She knows this. This has been a whole thing where after leaving whatever Jane needs from her for the day, she just stares at her phone with Tony's contact info pulled up before passing out from exhaustion.

But, hey, she's been busy with her own life.

"Darcy! Either silence the damn thing or answer it."

Speaking of her life. She groans into the data she's supposedly collating, but that has been finished for hours because she programmed a code to do it for her. "Shut up, Jane. I having a crisis!"

Jane wheels across the lab, glares at Darcy, snatches up the phone, and hits the ignore button with extreme prejudice. She smiles at Darcy's squawk of protest. "There, crisis averted. All better! Now put your damn phone on vibrate or something!" She wheels back to her sweet, sweet science.

And no, not okay. Now she actually has to call Tony back and explain that no, she did not hang up. That her boss did that.

Except her phone's ringing again. It's an unknown number, which means Coulson or a telemarketer. She's never wished for a call from a telemarketer more than she has right now.

Jane is glaring from across the lab again. "Tell them you're busy. Better yet, be busy."

"Sorry, boss-lady, no can do. I'm being activated."

"What, like a sleeper agent?"

"Oh hush. Go back to your science." She grimaces at the phone one last time before answering it with a cheery, "Hello!" as she walks out of the lab.

"Miss Lewis, I hope you weren't overly fond of Tony Stark." Phil's voice is calm and measured, but something's off about it.

"Um, a little, why?"

"Because I'm afraid he's given me no choice but to kill him."

"I'm sorry?"

"I gave him three note cards. All he had to do was read three note cards. The man is a bona fide genius. Nevertheless, he found it impossible to read three note cards. What is that?" Oh, poor, poor Phil. Now, Darcy can hear it, the tone of absolute despair that comes from trying to wrangle Tony Stark into doing something and finding it far more difficult than anything has any right to be.

"Well, he is Tony Stark." She laughs and shakes her head. "People always say his name like it's an excuse. It's really not, but as long as people keep saying his name in the 'I am so sorry that this person is actually eight in every way that will ever matter' sort of way, he fells justified in making that happen." They'd actually held a conversation about that. Darcy had fully agreed with that course of action. Because she usually found that his antics were mostly harmless unless provoked.

"Yes, well, this is a little bit worse. He just told national news that he's been getting in a suit of armor and fighting terrorists since he arrived back from Afghanistan. And that last night he fought another stolen suit of armor outside the Malibu office of SI."

Sonuvabitch! "Excuse me? Did you just say suit of armor? And what was that about terrorists? And this bears repeating, but did you just say suit of armor? Are we talking medieval knight or... what?" She can't even think of another option right now. This is not what she thought was happening. She doesn't know what she thought was happening, but it wasn't this.

There's a long blank silence while she freaks out a little. And, no, that's not okay.

"Phil! I swear, if you hang up on me!" She hisses as she paces the mostly empty courtyard.

"Not hanging up." He assures her.

And she can hear it. He was thinking about it. Ass. And there's almost a minute more of dead air where she checks several times that he hasn't lied and hung up anyways. Nope, he's still there, but he's not saying anything, and that's getting annoying. She's just about to start screaming down the line, but then...

"He hasn't talked to you much these last two months." It could've question, but nope, that is full-on statement of an unexpected fact.

She laughs, harsh and brittle. "He hasn't spoken to me at all since before his kidnapping. I've been without any information since he came back. I was starting to feel alone and unloved."

"Rhodes hasn't called you?"

"Nope, it's like I dropped off the grid only in reverse. The grid dropped me. You stopped calling. Rhodey stopped calling. I even tried to get a response from Pepper, but she never really responded before except to ask who I was. And over the last two months she hadn't even done that. Tony never even called to say hi. He was missing for three months. He never even tried to contact me."

"Oh."

"You know what, Coulson? I don't have time for this. My dad apparently just outed himself as a vigilante on live TV. I have to call and tell at him," she says in low tones.

"Darcy-"

She cuts him off before he can try to dissuade her. She sighs and looks around to make sure that no one's paying particular attention to her. She's getting the usual second glances of guys checking her out but nothing that seems like an eavesdropper.

Tony picks up before the first ring finishes. "Darcy!" And that's just great. He sounds like he's been drinking. He's excited, and he's probably been drinking, and she can practically hear him bouncing over the phone line. "Turn on the news. It doesn't matter what channel. It'll be on all of them. It's epic. You need to see it. So awesome."

"Tony, what is wrong with you?"

Something about the way she asks must set off the very few alarm bells that Tony still manages to listen to. "You know already. Why do you already know? Were you watching the news? You don't like watching the news. Who just called you? An unknown number?"

"Tony, stop hacking my phone. It's creepy. It would be creepy even if you weren't my dad."

"Hacking is such an inadequate term for the things I'm doing to your phone."

"Whatever. You never call. You never send me flowers or chocolates. You just electronically stalk me like a crazy person."

"I call you." And now he's being petulant. This man is such a child. She honestly can't believe that Dave and Maddy let her spend prolonged time alone with this man.

"You were kidnapped for three months and when you came back you went on some sort of bender that involves suits of armor and terrorists. Which by the way I'm super torn between dying to know and being so horrified that I don't even want to claim you as an acquaintance."

"No, seriously I've been calling you, and today was the first day the call went through." His voice is a little more strained, a little more serious. And that can't be a good sign. "It's been doing a thing where it rings and rings and rings. One day, I started calling you and forgot about the phone when Dummy started doing something off-limits. I came back to it like at least three hours later and it was still ringing. No voice-mail. No lady telling me that your phone had been disconnected. I thought you had done something to it to avoid me."

Darcy sighs. Okay, so maybe it didn't matter that she hadn't tried to contact Tony or Rhodey or Coulson. "Not me."

"Who?" And something's shifted. Tony is mad. As in comparisons to mother grizzly bears would not be misplaced.

"Probably, um, Obadiah?" And she's never sure what to call Stane anymore. Because calling him Obie after he threatened her with 'accidents' was just not a thing that was happening. And calling him Stane to Tony would be noticable.

To Darcy's surprise, Tony just lets out a dark chuckle. "One more thing, then. One more crime."

"Oh, Tony. What did..." And then she remembers. Coulson said something about a fight with a stolen suit of armor. That asshole. "Is he dead?"

"Yeah, he's dead. He tried to kill Pepper."

"He also tried to kill you." And as much as Darcy respects Pepper for putting up with being around Tony in a professional-almost-platonic way for all these years, Tony will always be more important. To pretty much everyone and anyone.

"Yeah, there's that." And goddamn him for being so calm.

"He was behind the kidnapping." Darcy has known that for months, but now she realizes that Tony knows, too.

"Yeah, he was selling weapons to a terrorist organization. They wanted the Jericho. But that would've been too conspicuous so he gave them me instead. Well, sort of. He wanted them to kill me. Paid them and everything, but they realized who I was, saved me after a fashion, and asked for more money. Then they set me to using scraps to make a Jericho for them." He laughs. "Obviously, I didn't. Instead I made a metal war-suit to escape with."

"What else?" Because no way did Tony come out of that unscathed. When she saw him on TV in August he'd looked beat up, but there had to be more to it than that.

There's the crackle of static that is Tony sighing. "I miniaturized an arc reactor to power it."

Darcy rolls her eyes. "What else, Tony?"

"It's, uh, also currently powering a magnet that's keeping shrapnel out of my heart."

And, wow, that was her breath catching. She can't breathe and falls to the bench behind her. "Shrapnel?"

"Yeah, there was that project about a year ago where I designed a thing-"

"I remember. I remember Stane being really excited about it. I remember thinking that it was just a horrible, horrible idea."

"I could tell. But anyway that was a thing that happened. It's fine now. The magnet keeps the shrapnel from moving."

"It's really not fine. But if you think it's fine, whatever. Tony, Stane was blocking my phone. Does that mean that Rhodey was calling too?"

"Yep. He was concerned, but there wasn't a way for him to get over to Culver."

"Okay. So what did you think about Agent 'Blankface' Coulson?"

There's a startled pause. "How did you meet him?"

"I e-mailed Pepper. Stane was going to have you declared dead. I didn't want that to happen. Coulson started stalking me. I threatened to kill him if you didn't come back alive." She shrugs. "It was mostly a joke, but also a little serious."

"How did you find out that Stane was going to have me declared dead?"

"Well, the day you disappeared he called me and told me not to watch the news. He made some vague comments. I made some pointed comments. He threatened you. I threatened him. He threatened me."

"He's very lucky that I didn't know that last night."

"I kinda think that was point of making sure that no one could reach me." She pauses. "And I kinda knew that he was the one who arranged the kidnapping. Oh, I'm also pretty sure that he arranged for the car crashes that killed your parents and my mom."

"Yeah. I think so, too." He sighs again. "Dammit, how did I miss all of that?"

"I don't know, but that doesn't really matter, does it?"

He laughs. "Right, the past is the past. And Stark men are made of iron."

Darcy sighs. Tony may be a genius, but he can also be a monumental idiot. "No, that's not what I meant. I meant to say that it won't matter. Because you don't plan on resting until it's fixed, do you?"

"No." And once again Darcy starts at the hint of steel and bite to Tony's serious voice. "I made a promise that I wouldn't waste my life this time."

And there's obviously another thing that she needs to pry from beneath his shields, but for now she'll leave it alone. "I don't know if I say you've wasted your life so far, just a little bit of an extended misspent youth."

"Echo, babe, I don't know if you've noticed this, but I'm almost forty. This is no longer a misspent youth. This is more like a mid-life crisis."

And it's just too much. He's back, and he's snarking at her, and she missed him so much she almost can't breathe with the relief of him being as safe as being Tony fucking Stark will ever be. "Tony," she starts around the thickest her voice has been since she talked to Rhodey back in May, "Don't let anyone ever tell you that you've grown up. You are eternally eight in every way that matters."

"Thanks, Echo. I hope you'll continue that tradition." And there it is again. Her childhood nickname. She never really liked it because after the first few times he only ever used it when he sad or feeling like he was ruining everything starting with her and ending with the mass explosion of the universe. Which Darcy granted that he might actually cause one day. But it would totally be worth it and Tony would have a ridiculous plan to make sure that no one was still using it.

Whatever, ignoring stupid insecurities for now. "Working on it, but I think Dave and Maddy may have overwhelmed your dastardly influence."

"Damn. And I worked so hard to make sure you carried on the family legacy."

"Please, I've seen the reports on Howard. He was middle-aged by the end of World War II."

"Yeah. He lost a good friend. Or so he said. I was never sure if I believed that." Tony's has turned sour at the mention of Howard.

"Believed what?"

Tony doesn't say anything for almost a whole minute, but then he sighs. "Well, we never talked much, but there were a couple of times when I was sick that he would talk to me. Really talk to me. He told me stories about a soldier he knew. A captain he helped out."

"A captain?" And Darcy can't see where this is going. There's got to be a punch line because Tony sounds like he's honest-to-God shifting in his seat.

"Yeah." He coughs nervously. "Howard kept going on and on about this Steve. About how the last thing he did was crash an enemy airplane into the sea."

And then she remembers the old cartoons she used to watch with Dave. The ones that Tony would always distract her from when she tried to watch them at Tony's place. "Tony. Are you talking about Captain America? As in the propaganda icon they made up to raise homefront morale?"

"Uh, kinda." And she can almost feel the heat she knows is coming off his cheeks.

"Are you saying that Howard said that he was a real person?"

"A little bit. When I was small, I, uh, was really into all that. He might have just been trying to cheer me up."

And oh, God, he's not saying what she thinks he is. "You were really into all that? Are you saying that you were a Junior Commando?"

Tony groans long and loud. "Please stop." Oh, he is saying what she thinks he is.

"No way. This is too beautiful. Before the Playboy of the Western World became America's Wild Child, he idolized the Star-Spangled Man with a Plan. That is just so great."

"Shut up, please." Now there's abject misery in his voice. She loves doing this to him because she knows that almost no one else can.

"No way. Did you have a shield? I bet you had all the swag. I bet Howard made you model shield to scale."

Tony gets quiet again. Except this time it doesn't feel embarrassed. "Yeah. He got all the stuff. I was spoiled even worse than I am now. He really did make me a shield. He just didn't do much else."

"Tony." Crap. She just kept hitting that ever-present, ever-moving nerve of the abysmal parenting that came from Howard Stark.

"No, I made my peace with it a long time ago. It's fine, Echo, really."

And, okay, three times in conversation is a little too much. "Why do you sometimes call me that?"

"You don't want to know. I should really stop."

"I think I already know. You always call yourself a classic narcissist. Echo was the nymph who fell in love with Narcissus and wasted away until all that was left of her was her voice. Am I warm?" She pauses to see if he'll try to backtrack or explain, but he remains silent. "You asshole. I'm not going to die from caring about you and I'm not going to turn out like you view yourself. I'm me. And I think I'm turning out pretty great."

"Me, too. It was just always a thing for me. I didn't want you to end up hurting yourself. Or breaking like I almost did. So I wanted to remind myself how I could ruin it if I didn't pay attention."

"Fuck you, Tony. I love you, and that is not going to change even if you were the most screwed up person in existence. Which by the by, you're not. So chill the fuck out and find something else to call me."

"Ma'am, yes, ma'am."

"You think you're cute but you're really not. You're an idiot, and it's a constant battle not to commit acts of violence to your personage. Your personage is especially annoying."

"But apparently you love me anyway."

"Well, I'm damn good at fighting my own battles and winning."

"Yes, you are." There's the sound of a feminine voice calling for him. "Pep's calling. I gotta go. I'll come visit soon. Gotta show you the suit. It's great. Okay, so right now it's kinda banged up, but it'll be great again once I rebuild it."

"Okay, and Tony?"

"What's up?"

"I've never really seen why you see yourself as Narcissus in the myths." And she never has. He may be self-centered, but he never let it rule his life. He let it get in the way of his work. Other things maybe but not his self-image.

"Yeah, who then?"

"It's been hard to decide, but now I'm leaning toward Hephaestus. Shrapnel, huh? And magnet close enough to keep it all from moving through your heart. That's gotta be pretty deep in your chest."

He takes a breath to respond, but she cuts him off.

"No, don't explain right now. You're fine for the most part, and for now I'll take that. We'll talk more later, but for now I've got work to do. See you later."

She hangs up and takes a deep breath. That was too much to cover in one conversation. Even for a conversation with Tony. Even if they'd been putting some of it off for years. She had to do something else. Something non-Tony. She walks back into the lab to find Jane ferreting around Darcy's space in the lab.

"Janey, what are you doing?" And she tries really hard not to let the conversation she just had impact her inflection. Really, really hard.

The magnificent Dr. Foster is cringing, so she probably didn't do that great. "Um, I was just looking for my stapler."

"On my desk?"

"I have the best stapler in the world. I know you steal it sometimes." Jane is pointing at Darcy with a long pointy machine part that Darcy's pretty sure has never actually fit into any of the lab equipment.

Darcy raises an eyebrow. "Sometimes, yes. However, it's currently right here." She gestures to the stapler on the corner of Jane's main lab table. Where it's plainly visible. "You, Dr. Foster, are currently on fire. Do we remember what happened the last time we took something from Darcy's space?"

Jane pouts. "Everything exploded." She shrugs. "Well, nothing vital exploded. And none of the data was destroyed. Actually the experiment still happened and it was even successful. How did you do that, by the way?"

"I am an enigma wrapped in mystery shrouded in, um, chocolate."

"Chocolate? Really? That's what you're gonna go with?"

"Absolutely, I am totally sticking with being shrouded in chocolate."

"Right, so who was on the phone? You seemed kinda upset. And you said something about being activated."

Crap. "One of my friends is having problems with his boyfriend. He always goes for the knight-in-shining-armor. And they always turn out to be some moron wrapped in tin foil. So I was annoyed because Phil always calls me and complains when I've already told him that the idiots are no good." It's always best to use some truth in a lie. That was one of the first things that Tony taught her. Which when she thinks about it makes her want to smack him.

Jane doesn't anything at first just purses her lips. Then she rolls her eyes. "Right. So that was you being activated?"

"I didn't know that was what he was calling about. Sorry, but all the collating is done. Your tests are graded and entered into the grade book. I have my spiel all prepared for the next review. So at this point the only thing I'm here for today is to make sure you don't fall into a hypoglycemic coma. Or OD on caffeine pills. So lay off." And now she's breathing hard, but really, she's so not in the mood for Jane to interrogate her.

Jane bites her lip. She stares down at her useless pointy thing. And, really, what is that, it's really distracting. Whatever, back to contemplative Jane. "Do you need a break from working here? I really like having you work for me. Everything's been going so smoothly. And next semester, there's that trip. But if you can't-"

"Whoa!" Darcy interrupts, stalling Jane's words with a raised hand. "Hey, you can't get rid of that easily. I might not be as helpful as usual for the next week, but, really, you have only yourself to blame for that." And, oh, Darcy has plans for Jane. She would have plans for Tony, but Tony is ridiculous and never does what he's supposed to do. But Jane. Jane is someone Darcy can work with.

Jane smiles. "I look forward to it."

Darcy rolls her eyes. "Oh, Janey, you really shouldn't." And then she gives Jane her most shit-eating grin. This is just the stress relief she needs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH MY GOD! WHAT IS THIS MONSTROSITY? A chapter of 4400 words worth of new content? How did that happen? I think it was mostly the fact that Tony wouldn't shut up and Darcy kept having crazy-brain. B/c that convo was all over the map. In fact she probably should've ended up more exhausted than she did.
> 
> BTW the week after this probably won't end up in this story, but more likely in my extra scenes fic on AO3. That fic will definitely be updated. Because I need to write more in this verse than really fits into the core stories. And for those you wanting more of Theory of Relatives, it might be a while. I mean to update that one I really do. It's just Darcy just keeps saying things and wanting to know why she was so mad at Tony (other than the fact that he forgot to tell the Avengers that she was his daughter, oh, Tony).
> 
> But I digress, whatever. I hope you enjoyed this latest installment. Next up more telephone conversations. Sigh. And of course Tony being an idiot.


	9. Morpheus, King of Dreams

_May 2010..._

Tony is so done with his life right now. None of his plans have panned out, and now he's dying. He'll be dead in less than a week, and there's nothing he can do to stop it. And, really, it's just his luck that he's lived just long enough to have to endure his birthday. He's never actually liked celebrating his birthday. Because even when he was young the parties were never for him. They were always for the crowds or the cameras or just about anyone else.

Except when he spent them with Darcy.

Those were the best memories. When he managed to slip away from the crazy parties that Joe Public expected from him and just hang out with his little girl and cake and sometimes Dave and Maddy.

But unfortunately this year is not one of those years. Darcy is out in New Mexico chasing heav'nly lights. Literally. Dr. Jane Foster, Ph.D. in astrophysics, is trying to document the Einstein-Rosen Bridge. Tony had to try really hard not to hide his face in despair when Darce had told him that. Because that was probably the least scientific science thing that an astrophysicist could do. But Darcy was pretty much ignoring him since he'd shown her the Iron Man. He'd made sure to take her the most pristine suit he'd had.

Darcy had taken one look at it and sighed at him.

And now he won't even see her in person before he dies.

Eighty-nine percent. He stares at his reflection and the numbers. And Darcy was wrong. Because here he is, wasting away staring at his reflection.

"Do you know which watch you'd like to wear to the party tonight, Mr. Stark?"

He rushes to hide the rash stemming from the reactor. It's amazing how quietly this new woman can walk in heels. Pepper was always click, click, click. He seriously needs to put a bell on her. "I'll give 'em a look." He finishes buttoning up while she makes him a drink. If that isn't the worst idea ever, he doesn't know what is. "I should cancel the party though, huh?"

"Probably." And she's doing something weird. Before, she was all professionalism and tidiness. Now she's being weird.

"Yeah, 'cause it's, um..."

"Ill-timed?" All doe-eyed and almost goading.

"Right, sends the wrong message."

"Inappropriate." Just like she's being. She hands him the drink and is just standing way too close. "Is that dirty enough for you?" And, wow, she's talking about the drink, right? Or is she? Tony honestly can't tell right now. And it's freaking him out.

"Um, gold face. Brown band. The Jaeger. I'll give that a look. Bring 'em over here." He watches as she walks away to walk back. He grabs the box. "I'll take that. Why don't you-" And she plants herself on the arm on his chair and proceeds to cover up a bruise on his face. "I gotta say, it's hard to get a read on you. Where're you from?"

"Legal." Well, that was astoundingly unhelpful.

Whatever. "Can I ask you a question, hypothetically? Bit odd. If this was your last birthday party that you were ever gonna have, how would you celebrate it?" And, God why is he asking her? He barely knows her. She barely knows him.

"I'd do whatever I wanted to do. With whoever I wanted to do it with."

Huh. Well, then there's that.

* * *

He's late. His party's been raging for a while now, and he's a little worse for the wear after drinking up in his room.

Rushman's advice isn't horrible, but it would leave all his diabolical scheming for naught. He's tried to set everything up, so it's all taken care of when he dies. Well, actually there're a couple of things he hasn't gotten to yet. Like the suit. Or Pepper.

But that's what he had planned for tonight.

Tony rubs his face tiredly. God, if he wasn't already dying, Pep'd kill him for this crap. That is, if Darcy didn't get to him first. Which was a distinct possibility because he wasn't sure how many of his tools she'd stolen the last time she was in his lab.

He misses her so much that even if his lungs were working properly, he wouldn't be able to breathe. He hasn't seen her nearly as much as he should've in these last few months. He'd missed her birthday and graduation last year. Though admittedly that was so far from being his fault that it's almost painful to countenance.

Now she's in graduate school for interdisciplinary studies. He didn't even know that was a thing. Getting a masters degree in interdisciplinary studies. It probably wasn't. Interdisciplinary studies was what normal people did because they were going in so many different directions that they ended up having trouble meeting their degree requirements. That was not a thing that happened at the graduate level. Was it?

He laughs through the burn of his scotch going down. Darce probably bullied them into designing a program just for her.

That's it. He shakes his head. He's being ridiculous. He's calling Darcy.

"Jay. Engage privacy protocol 41335." He really did not need some random sycophant barging in on this conversation.

"Confirmed, sir. Only the codes owned by Ms. Potts or Lt. Col. Rhodes will be accepted."

Tony smiles. And even the two of them will have to enter their code in twice before that'll happen. "Beautiful, call Darce."

"Dialing, sir." There's a long silence, then a click. JARVIS doesn't actually say anything for a minute, but then, "Pardon me, sir, but I believe-"

"Yeah," Tony interrupts, not really wanting to hear or confirm it. "She picked picked up, then hung up." He runs a hand through his hair. That's unexpected. "Uh, Jay try her again."

"Of course, sir. Dialing."

Tony has JARVIS try five more times. Darcy must be bored. And annoyed with him. Because after the first time she lets it ring longer and leaves the connection open longer.

He tries talking to her as long as JARVIS shows that the connection is open, but Tony's pretty sure Darcy puts the phone where she can't hear him after answering.

So now he's just sitting on the floor in his room with a bottle of scotch and trying not to yank all his hair out, when he hears a knock at the door.

"Jay?" He sighs.

"It's Ms. Potts, sir. Shall I let her in?"

Tony waves a negligent hand. "Yeah, sure, why not?"

"Tony?"

And, dammit, he was so close to getting her disappointed in him. So close to making it easier for him to be gone from her life. But now she's concerned, and she's supposed to be disappointed in him and trying to distance herself from his inevitable explosion.

"Tony, are you okay? Because as glad as I am that you're not down there breaking laws that haven't been invented yet, this doesn't seem much better. What's going on? Why're you up here?"

"Pepper." He sets down the scotch and grabs her face. "You're supposed to be disappointed in me. I didn't mess up fast enough."

He's kinda smooshing her face so her smile looks a little weird, yet it doesn't detract from the sadness he sees there. "Oh, Tony, are you trying to push me away?"

He's not supposed to tell the plan. But the plan was fucked from the very start. It was probably one of the worst that he'd come up with. He's blaming the poisoning. "I'm blaming the palladium." And, shit, he hadn't meant to say that out loud.

"Tony, what does the palladium have to do with it?"

"Nothing, Pep. Go back to the party. You can shut it down if you want. I'm not going. I'm tired, Pep." He starts to push himself up but falls half-way up the wall.

"Hey, careful. Is something wrong with the arc reactor?"

He looks at her. And, God, she's beautiful and probably the second best thing to ever happen to him behind Darcy coming into his life. But he can't tell her. He tried. He tried with omelets and suggesting a sabbatical. It'd ended with burnt eggs and that look she gets when she can't deal with him and his special brand of crazy. She's just too much, too good for him, too strong, too sincere in her worry. And Tony can't bring himself to tell her, "Yes, there is something horribly wrong with the arc reactor. It's poisoning me. I'm dying and there's nothing I, or anyone else, can do to stop it."

"No, Pep, the reactor's fine. I'm just drunk and tired and lonely, but not the type of lonely that can be helped by being down there with those people."

"So, will there be anything else, Mr. Stark?"

He laughs. So much more than she can give. "No, Ms. Potts, that's everything."

"If you're sure, Tony." And she pauses at the door before she leaves. "You remember what I said, right? Last October?"

"Um, not really?"

She turns back to face him. "You're all I have, Anthony Edward Stark. Don't you dare try to push me away."

This time the throbbing in his chest doesn't have anything to do with the poison. "Of course not, Ms. Potts."

* * *

Pepper's gone. She kicked everyone else out, too. So there's that. "Jarvis, call Rhodey."

"Of course, sir."

Rhodey picks up after a couple of rings. "Hey, Tony. Heard you ended your party early. You okay?"

Well, that was a loaded question. Tony doesn't know how to answer for a minute. "Not really, buddy. I'm doing pretty shitty right now."

"What's wrong?"

"Don't wanna talk over the phone. Would you mind coming over? I know it's late, but-"

"Nah, man, I'll be right over."

* * *

"Hey, Tony, what-"

Tony's in the workshop. This isn't a good plan. This is in fact the worst part of his plan. He's just past buzzed and into tipsy. And now Rhodey's here. "Hey, buddy. How're you?"

"What are you doing?" Like it's not completely obvious. Like Rhodey can't see him.

He's sitting in his workshop in the suit. That's pretty much what he's doing. "Nothing, really."

"Tony, take off the suit." Rhodey's voice isn't concerned anymore. He's getting angry.

"Rhodey." He really doesn't want to do this. "No." But he has to do it somehow. This'll have to do.

"Tony, what's going on?" And now Rhodey's looming over him. Trying to bully him into talking.

Tony's still sitting and looking up at the annoyed airman. This would've worked better if he was actually moving around, and if Rhodey could actually tell that he'd been drinking. Right now, he just looks weird. "I can't tell you."

"Why not?" Rhodey slumps a little at that. The thought that there might be something Tony thought Rhodey couldn't be trusted with. Something else, rather. Besides Darce. And everything kept coming back to her.

He glares at the ground. She didn't answer him. She didn't want him around anymore. Lucky her, he was gonna be gone soon. Then she would have to deal with all the shares and the patents and the legal crap that came with those sorts of things.

Not important. He sighs. No, that's a lie. She's always been the most important. Since he found out that he could interact with her and not destroy her.

"I can't tell you that either. I just, I need you to take the suit."

"You need me to take the suit?"

"I was gonna do this during the party, but Darcy wouldn't pick up." He shrugs as much as he can in the suit. "So I was late. Then Pep was there, and she sent everyone home."

"So that's why you need me to take the suit?" And Tony knows he's not making a lot of sense, but what? No.

"No, that's how I was gonna make you think you needed to take the suit. But now there's no one here, so this just seems kinda pathetic."

"Tony, what's going on? Why does it feel like we're going in circles?"

Tony doesn't know. All Tony knows is that this has been a crap birthday. "I'm tired, Rhodey. They were right. I'm not a hero. And I'm tired of trying to pretend to be, so I'm asking you to take the suit. Don't let anyone else fly it. Only you. And try not to let anyone stupid play with the reactor."

"Tony..."

"Get the damn suit on! Or I'll give you a reason to want it on!" Tony's done with this conversation. He's tired, and Rhodey's either going to leave, or he's going to take the suit. Either way Tony always ends up alone.

And that's the only way he can get through this shit.

* * *

Except apparently that was a lie.

Apparently the only way Tony was going to get through this shit was by having his neck stabbed by kidney-theives and being growled at by the Dread Pirate.

Did that make him Westley? He didn't actually want to be Westley. There was no Inigo Montoya in this story, and Fezzik was dead, but even if he wasn't the giant still wanted to kill him.

Then there was this agent threatening him with tasers, drool, and reality TV. Tony's not sure which part of that he's most annoyed at. Not to mention this man knows about Darcy. He's pretty sure that Fury doesn't, which is weird. Agent seemed like a Yes-Man until he started threatening Tony.

The other man might be a little peeved about the "I am Iron Man" thing.

So now it's apparently a thing that there are SHIELD-babies setting up monitors in his living room. Monitoring the atmosphere over New Mexico.

Wait, what? "Hey, does that say Puente Antiguo?"

"Mr. Stark, don't you have something you're supposed to be doing?"

"Yeah, yeah, me dying, you taser. Seriously, small town in New Mexico? Puente Antiguo? Middle of the desert? Barely a place?"

"Yes, this is atmospheric data on Puente Anitguo. Apparently, there's been a development." Agent's face hasn't moved. He knows. Even if he hasn't reported Darcy, he's gotta be monitoring her.

Tony rubs his face. "Can I talk to you over here?" He pulls the agent into a closet.

"Mr. Stark." And there's the beautiful hint of exasperation that Tony loves eliciting from people.

But that wasn't important now. "Shut up. Is she okay?"

"She's fine. It's weather anomalies." And, dammit, this man is so lying.

"No, it's really not."

"It actually is. A subtle aurora. But I think it's about to develop into something more. I think it's a wormhole."

Tony draws back at that. "Seriously? There's actually an Einstein-Rosen bridge out there." He drops his head back. "Fuck."

"Exactly. So you need to get your ass in gear. And stop hiding from everyone. She misses you."

"Coulson, I tried. She wouldn't answer."

"You tried calling her on your birthday. Typically not a good night for sober conversation."

"So, you think I should try calling her now?"

"Maybe. You should probably focus on not dying first."

"Right." Tony nods. "Good talk."

"Go away. I'm busy. I'm not Ms. Potts." And he walks out of the closet.

Asshole. "That's right. She's prettier and nicer." He sighs and leans against the back of the closet.

"Um, sir." And now there's a baby agent biting his lip and obviously wondering why he's addressing a man in a closet. "Agent Coulson told me to escort you to your lab?"

Tony's trying really hard not to laugh about the why the baby agent sounds like he's asking a question. "Well, did he, or didn't he?" He resigns himself to watching his father record the intro to the Stark Expo back in '74.


	10. Heracles, Divine Protector of Men

Darcy is not excited about her job anymore. She's maximized her efficiency, Jane's efficiency, and even the efficiency of the laundromat down the road. She's seriously bored, but she doesn't feel like dealing with Tony's drama either.

Because he's gone off the deep end since he showed her the suit. She's read about the random philanthropy. Read about the battles against terrorism. Read about the Expo in Flushing Meadows. Read about the throw-down in Monaco.

She wants nothing to do with the craziness that Tony's life has become since Obadiah's betrayal and death. Since the genesis of Iron Man. She's busy enough with Jane's spectacular brand of science. Especially since Dr. Erik Selvig showed up, and she's had to run interference. Because Erik is about as credulous as Tony was when she told him about Jane's focus and project in New Mexico. Needless to say, Darcy is not impressed by how unimpressed Dr. Selvig is at Jane's progress.

Jane's staring up at sky. Because if there's one thing this woman's done it's to take star-gazing to a fucking art form. "Wait for it," she mutters at Erik's expectant look.

And Darcy believes in her and in her science, but she's been driving out to stare at the sky for weeks, so she asks, "Can I turn on the radio?" Because if there's one thing Tony's done, it was to cultivate a healthy sense of irreverence in his progeny.

"No." Jane snaps.

"Jane, you can't keep doing this." And Erik is still all disapprove-y and incredulous. To be fair Jane's light show is late, but still.

Jane rushes back to her equipment in the van. "The last seventeen occurrences have been predictable to the -"

"Jane," he interrupts indulgently.

"Second."

"You're an astrophysicist, not some storm-chaser."

"I'm telling you there's a connection between these atmospheric disturbances and my research."

Jane is pleading with him in the back, but Darcy's not really hearing it anymore. Something's starting, but it's not like before. It's just...

"Erik I- I wouldn't have asked you to fly out here if I weren't absolutely sure."

The sky is opening up, and Darcy's the only one seeing it. The light show of the last few weeks was tiny becoming small and, now that she thinks about it, almost like a crescendo. But nothing like this. Nothing she'd ever imaged was like this. This is a thundercloud made of rainbows and lightning and impossible things dreamt before breakfast. "Jane, I think you wanna see this."

"What is that?"

"I thought you said it was a subtle aurora." And there's some of the awe that's been missing from Erik fucking Selvig's tone since he touched down in New Mexico.

"Go!" Jane climbs back into the shotgun seat. She's got her camera out, and she's vibrating with the excitement of the chase. "Get closer."

"Right, good one." Darcy steps on the gas anyway. She's an adrenalin junkie just as much as Jane or Tony. And this thing is different and beautiful and probably going to kill her. But whatever, right?

"Go!"

And Darcy totally would except something's changing. The cloud is less of a cloud now. The cloud is less rainbows. The colors are still there, but now the cloud is more of a tornado and the rainbow and lightning is more lightning in every color and fiery destruction.

So Darcy does the only sensible thing and yanks at the wheel, driving away from the multicolored downpour of fire.

"What are you doing?" Jane, like the science-crazed person she is, doesn't understand self-preservation.

"I am not dying for six college credits!" Darcy yells over the wind whipping through the desert.

They fight over the wheel, and Darcy loses because she wasn't ready to resort to violence. They careen towards the center of the storm only coming to a stop when they crash into a disturbingly man-shaped object.

For a moment, Darcy just stares at her boss, and nobody moves. Then, they all scramble out. Darcy has a crazy moment where she apologizes to every god she can think of for not appreciating the lovely art of collating data before she calls out, "I think that was legally your fault!"

And then things just get weirder.

* * *

The frenzy of activity from Jane when they get back from the hospital is a little worrying, but nothing too unusual. She's everywhere, digging through the data, moving things, and generally looking like a madwoman. Darcy thinks it's adorable how easily she's forgotten that they hit a person with the van only hours ago. And Darcy doesn't know what to do with what happened. She'd kind of freaked out this morning and tased a man. A really big Scandinavian man who said his name was Thor.

Darcy was never going to have a normal life, but this was supposed to be the more normal aspect. She wasn't supposed to live out that old Weather Girls song. So she collated data, printed images from Jane's camera, and tried to pretend none of the other stuff was happening.

Erik and Jane make that incredibly difficult.

"You don't think this was just a magnetic storm, do you?" Erik asks as he and Jane try to puzzle out the mystery of previous night. Darcy is thoroughly out of her depth and half a step from calling Coulson or Tony, but, no, that's just a horrible idea.

"Look, the lensing around these edges is characteristic of an Einstein-Rosen Bridge."

"A what?" And she almost winces as she realizes how uninformed her surprise sounded. Jane had done it. The mad scientist had actually found a Bridge.

"I thought you were a science major?" And there goes Erik sounding for all the world like Einstein-Rosen Bridges are just things that people know. That to not know about them means that she's beyond dim and into mentally deficient.

And the truth is that she's doing a masters in interdisciplinary studies focusing on the science, mythos, psychology, and politics associated with the superhumans and vigilantes popping up everywhere. Because she can feel the way things are moving and wants to be able to help people like Banner and her father. But Selvig's attitude towards Jane's science and Darcy's overwhelming pretty has Darcy on edge. He looks at her and sees a student but not one of value. So she just pouts and cocks her head to the side. "Political science."

Which is true. And she's more like Tony than she really likes to admit because she absolutely adores the aghast look on his face.

Jane just rolls her eyes and mutters, "She was the only applicant."

Which, while being true, was misleading, but Darcy has always downplayed her science abilities. It's almost always better to be underestimated.

Regardless of what Selvig thinks about Jane's work, he cares enough about her to follow her out to this town. He cares enough that he sat in the back of the van and came with as they traveled to where the aurora had been for the last few weeks.

But she is unbelievably annoyed when he turns to her and says very slowly, "An Einstein-Rosen Bridge is a theoretical connection between two different points in space."

"It's a wormhole." Jane tosses in, forgetting that Darcy said the same thing in her lecture on the Bridge in her astrophysics course.

"Hmmm." Darcy doesn't feel like arguing about this. She can deal with being underestimated. It's not like Erik would be staying forever.

"Erik, what do you see?" She's waving around one of the still from the video she'd taken.

"Stars?"

Darcy walks away towards the board where they've set up much of the stills from Jane's video. And, wow, it was terrifying at the time but in hindsight the storm is nothing but incandescently beautiful.

"Yeah, but not our stars! This is the star alignment for our quadrant for this time of year. And unless Ursa Minor decided to take a day off, these are someone else's constellations."

Jane's voice fades into the background noise as Darcy leans in and peers closer at the swirls of color. "Hey, check this out."

There's a shadow in the colored lights. A distinctly man-shaped shadow.

"No, it can't be." Darcy could really learn to hate Erik's incredulous tone.

"I think I left something at the hospital." And just like that they're gone again. Rushing out to find out what the man has to say about literally falling from the sky.

* * *

And so apparently that happened. And now Puente Antiguo's on fire. Darcy has no idea what to do with this information other than the fact that Jane's obviously going to be even more crazy for science.

However before that can fully sink in and fill her with the inevitable dread, her thoughts are interrupted by a light tap to her shoulder. "Miss Lewis."

And she would recognize that voice anywhere. Of course Phil's still here. Tony Stark's illegitimate unknown daughter was at the site of an alien invasion. Of course Phil's going to stick around and bother her. Even if he'd totally ignored her before. And, wow, as weird as Darcy's life has been, she never imagined she'd have to think those words in the context of real life in any way that wasn't ironic. Because, seriously, there was a fucking alien invasion in which a couple of Norse gods used a small town for their tantrum.

She shakes her head. Not the point. Well, it kinda was. Whatever. "Son of Coul." She does her best boom. Not quite on par with Thor's, but he's been practicing a lot longer than she has. Also she imagines that being the god of thunder lends to an increased proficiency at booming.

He actually deigns to grimace. "Please, _please_ , don't tell _him_ about that."

She grins at that. There will really only ever be one _him_ between the two of them. And how crazy was that her father eclipsed a Norse god in the things that she and Coulson were discussing. "I make no promises." She shrugs. "Not that we've really been talking lately." She casts an annoyed look at his blank face. "Although I'm sure you already know that."

"I did, but not for the reasons you think. He's very good at dodging our bugs."

"Oh, good. So I shouldn't really have to worry about anyone but you figuring it out?"

"Probably not."

"What did you end up telling the higher-ups about the e-mails that Potts was getting?"

"Random hacker that was a fan of his."

"Right. And they believed that?"

"Believe it or not, I generally don't make it a common practice to lie to my bosses. So when I do, they don't tend to notice."

"Good for you. So are you gonna give Jane's stuff back?"

"Maybe. Any compelling reason I should?"

His blase tone annoys her more than it should. Okay, then. "Other than the fact that she's your best shot at finding a way to recreate the Bifrost? Other than the fact that she'd be a wonderful asset if you managed to swallow your pride enough to apologize? How about the fact that I will seriously fuck your shit up if you hurt her?" By the end of her tirade, she's right in his face. In fact, she's almost spitting in his face. It's kind of a problem, because despite the mild-mannered façade, Darcy's pretty sure that people don't get to be high-ranking super-special-awesome secret agents by being pushovers. Or, really, by being anything less than a complete and utter badass.

Right now, though. Right now, Darcy could not give less of a fuck about what Coulson could do to her. Jane is her friend. This data is the key to finding Thor again, but more importantly, Jane was right.

Jane saw beyond the normal limits of science. She followed what she believed in out to the ass-end of the Land of Enchantment. And when everyone all the way down to Darcy and the janitors who heard Culver's other professors gossip didn't believe, Jane Foster was fucking right. Even if Jane can never really publish her findings, that data belongs to her, and SHIELD can't take that from her.

Because if they try beyond what they've done, Darcy is coming after them with a bat and a laptop.

Coulson stares impassively at her, but doesn't do anything more than nod.

He turns, but she grabs him before he can take so much as a step. "No, Coulson, I need you to say it out loud."

"Darcy. I promise Dr. Foster will have her data back before the end of the week."

Darcy relaxes minutely. She shouldn't trust this man as much as she does, but she can't help it. He's a fixture, and he said that he didn't rat her out to his bosses. "Okay. So, what did you mean about knowing about Tony, but not because of bugs?"

It's only because she's holding on to his arm that she notices it. He tenses at the question. He's not scared, but he doesn't want to tell her. "There was a situation with the Expo."

That's... a weird answer. Even for Coulson at his most implacable, there's something off with that answer. Well, this can't be good. "What kind of situation?"

"The kind of situation that you would do well to talk to him about rather than me."

"No, Coulson. Tell me what happened."

"You heard about Monaco?"

"Some asshat with a reactor came after him with electrified whips?"

"Close enough, yes. His name was Anton Vanko. His father worked with Howard."

"Which is how he had a reactor. But didn't he die in an explosion in..." No, that Coulson mentions him at all tells her that the man who attacked Tony on the track came back another time. "What happened?"

"Justin Hammer arranged to have Vanko extracted from prison."

"Sonuvabitch! He wanted him to make suits, didn't he?"

"Yes, from what we've been able to put together, Vanko refused and made him drones instead. However, circumstances led to Colonel Rhodes acquiring a suit which he had Hammer upgrade." He pauses. "If you could call it that."

Despite Coulson's phrasing, Darcy can't help but smile. "He had Hammer put a bunch of artillery on it, didn't he?"

"Yes." He shrugs. "Very cool, except that there were the inevitable bugs that come with HammerTech."

Darcy rolls her eyes. "Well, obviously. That man is such an idiot. But you know the worst part about his idiocy? He doesn't know how to hire either. He's smart enough to do some things, but he's not smart enough to leave his ego out of it and let his people do the work. He wants so badly to beat Tony that he trips over himself and makes horrible, horrible products."

"No argument here." Coulson stays quiet after that, just watching her.

She sighs. "There's something else, isn't there?"

He nods.

"What is it?"

"You should've answered when he called."

"When? On his birthday? Yeah, no, I learned a long time ago that there are several days a year that if I don't know exactly what Tony's been doing, I don't answer the phone. May 29th, September 15th, and December 16th. Tony does not do well with anniversaries. If it weren't so close to his birthday, I think I'd add May 18th to the list. So, no, I was not going to answer his call on his birthday. And he knew that. He knows that. He is self-aware enough that he knew I wasn't going to answer, and if he really wanted to talk he would've texted me."

"You're right. He didn't want to talk. He needed to talk, and you let him down. Does he usually call you multiple times on those dates?"

"No."

"Did he call you multiple times that night?"

"Yes."

"He needed to talk, but he didn't want to talk. Darcy, he was dying."

"No, that's not possible." The denial comes out before she can even think about it. It doesn't even register. She doesn't even try to hear and process what he just said. "It takes strength to operate the suit. He couldn't..."

"Darcy, the palladium in the reactor was poisoning him."

"No, he would've talked to me sooner. That- He would've known for a long time." Even through her protests she thinks back to his craziness. His recent excessive philanthropy. And everything falls into place.

"He has. He's known for months. You noticed he started giving things away?"

And now she can see it. Can see him noticing the changes and having JARVIS run tests. Can see him furiously running calculations. Can see him wrecked and staring into space, telling Jay to try again. Fuck. "Since January?"

"We believe so."

"You said he was dying? How about now?" Because there's no denying anything.

"He fixed it. Created a new element and everything."

"Okay." She takes a deep breath. "You're an ass for just saying that. But, whatever, I'll call him later. Follow me, and I'll think of something very creative and very annoying to do to you." She glares one last time before stalking off. God, she needs a drink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: I'm ba~ack! Sort of. Ugh. This took forever. Which is part school, part me not having enough drive or time to work on it, and part my style of writing.
> 
> Which I just realized is really weird. Or maybe not? I usually write out the dialogue first on paper in short hand (ish) and then go back and type that out while only partly paying attention. After that I go into this weird mode where I go back through and add tags to clarify the speaker as well as action to, yanno, actually tell a coherent story that isn't just banter or walls of monologuing (which is a bad habit I unfortunately force the characters into). All the while proofreading and editing to make sure it's right. Ish. IDK!
> 
> Is that weird? I can't tell if that's weird. It might be weird. Or this might be me being insecure.
> 
> Also that might be a weird place to stop, but I feel comfortable with that because there's a companion chapter in the works as well.
> 
> ~S


	11. Athena, Goddess of Wisdom and Battle Strategy

_June 2010..._

Tony has to say, if not for the parts of it still on fire, Puente Antiguo would not be very interesting.

"No! Shoo! Get out! I found it first. This is mine. Fly away, engineer."

Well, to be fair, it also has a small astrophysicist trying to bat at the armor with a ... box of Pop-Tarts? "Um? Hello?"

"No, no, no. I said goodbye. This is not a Beatles song. I'm telling you to leave. Shoo! Scram."

"Yes, I understand that. I'm just a little confused on the execution. What are the vile pastries supposed to accomplish?"

She stops at that and glares at the box. "It's empty."

"Oh." Because, really, what else is he supposed to say?

She stares at the apparently empty box of Pop-Tarts for an awkward minute. Her hair droops forlornly. "My intern stole my coffee, and she won't get me any more Pop-Tarts."

And apparently Darcy has become evil.

"I don't even like Pop-Tarts," Dr. Foster complains. "It's just that they're convenient and provide sugar highs."

"Understandable." He nods. Things have been ingested that he regrets, like hard-core regrets. Like that time he kept drinking the mold. That was awful. "Especially in the absence of coffee."

"You need to leave," she orders, brandishing the box again.

"You've got a one-track mind, don't you?"

"Don't you?"

"Touché."

"Seriously, Stark. Get out. I don't know what you want, but I had my research stolen once this week already, and I will not stand for that shit again."

"Whoa. Not here to steal. Here to acquire. Here to fund. Here to help."

She squints at the face-plate. Yeah, he's not lowering that until she puts the box down. His bruises have bruises. Becoming a superhero at his age was not his best idea ever.

"I'll have complete autonomy?"

"I'll even fend off SHIELD if you want." Lies, horrible, horrible lies. He might have his legal team fend them off. But he's probably going to make Pepper do it.

"Why?"

He would shrug. He really would, but the armor isn't made to do that easily. "Look, Doc, one of my talents other than actually doing ridiculous feats of engineering, having no shame, and being full of arrogance, is that I can recognize talent. I can recognize things that will be useful. And I will do a lot to acquire and keep those things. And I do even more to keep the people. So, name your price."

"Fine." She sags a little like she'd been trying to keep the bottom from falling out. She even sets down that stupid box. "You'll have a position for my intern, too. I'm sure you've apprised yourself of all that happened here."

"Of course." Well, he had after Coulson told him there was an alien artifact that fell in Puente Antiguo.

"She's smart," she says. And Tony's confused because she's defending Darcy. She leaning forward and getting into the armor's space. Not exactly the best idea, but he likes it because she's fighting to keep Darcy.

He smiles. "Jay, release armor locks." And he steps out of the whirring armor to offer her a placating hand.

She takes a step back and narrows her eyes. "Mr. Stark."

"What part of your contract are we discussing first? Sounds like we're discussing Ms. Lewis first." Because, yeah, he has to play this game still. Although Darce probably wouldn't mind if her boss knew the truth.

"She's integral to my work."

"Really? Because a second ago you were complaining that she cut off your supplies."

"No. She's important."

"Her background is in poly-sci."

"She's mine."

Well, that's one way of putting it. Bafflingly, that way of putting it also comes with bonus hugging of the damn Pop-Tart box to her chest. Tony decides to ignore that in favor of further banter.

"Oh really? Does she know that?"

"She wants to help me find Thor."

He almost wishes he had a chair and a whip to fend her off with. Well, the suit should impede her if she goes completely feral.

"Your super hot alien god boyfriend? Why wouldn't she? He might not know that for the majority of the mortal population, monogamy is a thing. Like one of the biggest things."

"Darcy thinks he's crazy."

"I've looked into Ms. Lewis' background. That wouldn't really be a deterrent." Which kind of made Tony insanely furious or possibly furiously insane because, dammit, his little girl had been raised better than that. Even if he hadn't done most of the raising.

"She's my friend. She believed in me. And I didn't stand up for her."

"What do you mean?"

"Erik. He didn't understand that she's smart in her own right. I'm pretty sure she's been fiddling with my equipment. After SHIELD dismantled it, it was a little trashed at first, but I think she fixed it while I was sleeping. She likes being underestimated, but she shouldn't have to deal with being looked down upon."

Tony grins at her. "Cool. She likes building things?" Because he likes that she still likes that. And it's kept her close-ish. He's always gonna be the one with best toys.

"Yeah. She must have been addicted to K'Nex."

"Yeah," he sighs. Because she had been. Those and all the other toys he'd had in the shop.

"Tony!" And cue Darce.

Jane starts at her familiarity. "You know Tony Stark?"

"Shoo, Jane, go back to your impression of a broody dragon. I have somethings to go over with Mr. Stark."

Jane huffs but does walk off.

"Is that gonna cause problems for you?" He asks, grinning because his baby girl is okay. She survived the insanity of a showdown between alien god brothers throwing down in small-town America.

"Please," Darcy says with a roll of her eyes, "she's barely gonna remember that she met you let alone the impossible fact that I know you. What are you doing here?"

"Heard there was a Royal Rumble."

"So you thought you'd come check up on me? You couldn't even travel like a normal person? You had to bring the suit?"

"Wait, it's not -"

"No," she says, waving him off. "I can't believe you. You thought you'd just show-"

"Darcy, hold on-"

"Ah, Mr. Stark." Coulson's voice cuts through Tony's protest. And seriously, he wants to finish a goddamn sentence. "Thank you for being so punctual. However I must formally disapprove of the open poaching."

Darcy blinks between the two of them. "Oh."

Tony shrugs, trying magnanimous on for size. "Agent called me. Asked me to come out. I'm a SHIELD consultant now. Also," he turns to glare at Coulson, "SHIELD does not dictate who I do or do not poach."

She raises an eyebrow at the last. Yeah, that probably sounded a little too fanboy. She rolls her eyes at his grin. "Cool, Tony. So what did you think of Jane? You can't have her."

"You need to feed that woman. And why not?"

"If I gave her any coffee or food right now, she wouldn't sleep. Because you would take her to your lab and we would never see either of you again. Either the science would be beautiful and you would both die from exposure and starvation or you would kill each other over a cup of coffee. I have absolutely no idea which I find more likely but either way the carnage would be terrific."

"Oh. Well, yeah, I mean, science." He's not really sure what kind of gesture he makes, but it's definitely indicative of 'up'. "Science that could lead to love and or orgasms. I need to do that kind of science more often."

"I said death not-"

Coulson rains on the parade. "As interesting as your sideshow is." Darcy flinches at that. Well, that's new. There's a story there. Tony doesn't like Darcy having stories with Coulson. "We do have an appointment, Mr. Stark. And I have no interest in waiting even one month for this appointment. So, Miss Lewis, if you'll excuse us?"

She grins at him. "Nope," she says giving it an extra pop as she leans against Tony.

And thus commences a battle of the ages. Which Darcy can apparently win. Great. It's not like he ever wanted to win an argument with her ever again.

Coulson shakes his head. "Fine, Mr. Stark, we need you to have a chat with General Ross."

"Ugh. Thunderbolt." Darcy mutters, pulling a face.

"I did ask you to leave. But, yes, Thunderbolt. We need-"

"This about Harlem?" Tony interrupts.

"Harlem?" Darcy casts him a wary look. "What happened to Harlem?"

"It's a little worse for wear. There was a showdown there, too. Banner and someone else?" Tony raises an eyebrow at Coulson.

"Doc's back in the states?" Darcy grins at him.

"She knows about Banner?" Coulson is actually confused. He glares at Tony who smirks before turning to Darcy. "Why do you know about Banner?"

She rolls her eyes and pats his shoulder. "Dude. I was at Culver for undergrad, too. I was in his last class before his accident. Who was the other guy?"

Coulson's face runs the gambit between pained and resigned. "You're just at the center of every storm, aren't you? He's a soldier named Blonsky that mutated himself with Banner's blood."

"How did he get samples?" Darcy asks with narrowed eyes.

"Three guesses and the first two don't count," Tony singsongs.

"Yes, it was the general. That's actually what I need to talk to you about. We need to get Blonsky on board for the Initiative. I need you to talk Ross into releasing him into our custody."

"Whoa! Back up. You want the guy who turned himself into a knock-off Hulk on the team, but I'm 'not recommended'?" That hurt. He wanted to help, and this Blonsky just wanted power.

"This isn't personal, Stark." And, really? No. That's not okay.

"Fuck you. Of course, it's personal. You want my tech without me in it."

"Tony." He hadn't realized he'd stepped away from the armor and was advancing on the other man until he feels Darcy's small hand on his arm. He turns to see her smiling sadly at him. She winks and pats his arm. He takes a deep breath as she turns to Coulson. She peers shrewdly at him and then beams. "You don't actually want the soldier, do you? SHIELD doesn't even want him, do they?"

Coulson smiles but doesn't actually say anything. The asshole.

Darcy laughs. "Tony, none of the military have ever liked you. Why would using you to talk one of them, a particularly disgraced one, be a good idea unless they didn't really want you to succeed?"

Tony groans. Motherfucker. Of course. "Dammit, you want to use me as a patsy? Why is that a better plan?"

Coulson leans in and lowers his voice. "We need someone who'll make Ross so mad that he won't possibly want to give up Blonsky."

"And who better than America's favorite asshole?" Tony sighs. Well, he has a well-cultivated image.

"Stark-"

"No, Agent, it's not like I don't have plenty of ego to go around."

"So, what's the problem?"

"Nothing." At least not now that he knows what he's actually meant to do. "I'm just being difficult. I'd love an opportunity to yank Ross' chain. But I'm taking Darcy."

"What? Why?"

"She's better at righteous indignation than I am."

"And how do you plan on explaining being accompanied by a gorgeous young woman?"

"My current publicist. My last PA was awful. You're up to that right, kid?" He didn't want to think about that red-headed harpy. He didn't want a new PA, and he is going to refuse one for as long as possible. If he's really lucky, Pep may give him a whole week and a half.

"Of course I can." And the thing was, Darcy is the logical choice. She puts up with him. She can handle him. He couldn't win an argument with her when she was three, let alone now that she's learned rhetoric and critical thinking.

"Stark, this is important. It's not a field trip." Right, off-topic. Agent Agent is trying to wheedle Darcy away from him. Or maybe some more reverse psychology.

"Coulson, I'm hurt. Don't you trust me?" She smiles dangerously at him. Because with Starks reverse psychology just might work.

"Not at all, Miss Lewis. You were raised in the presence of one of the most dangerous men I know."

"Aw, flatterer." Tony grins at him.

"Coulson, I'm a poly-sci major. I can be politic when I want to be. I know generals. I know angry men. I know how to lead them to their graves and get them to lie down."

"Fine, take the girl. But the two of you get to explain to the good doctor."

"Please, she's half-an-hour away from passing out for at least thirty-six hours. I'll leave her a note, but she'll never notice that I was gone. Or I could say I'm going home to check on a sick parent. Because apparently one of them actually was."

Tony tenses. Shit and dammit. "You told her?"

Coulson rolls his eyes. "Stark, this young woman is the closest thing to an in I have with multiple mad scientists I'm responsible for keeping track of. She's made friends with an alien god. And I didn't even know about the thing with Banner. If she asks me a question, I'm gonna answer her."

"It's okay, Tony. I'm sorry I didn't answer on your birthday."

"Yeah."

"Tony, seriously, I-"

He waves her off. It was a thing. Now it's not. "Well, we better get this farce under way. Go write your note." He turns away, but glances back at Coulson. "You realize that I could have actually persuaded Ross, right? It wouldn't have been easy, but I can be damn convincing when I want to be."

"You wouldn't have wanted to be."

Tony sighs, cursing his eidetic memory and Nick Fury and boy bands on steroids. "I wouldn't be so sure. If the incentive was right." He shrugs and walks away to wait to take his daughter flying.

* * *

"Hmmm, the smell of stale beer and defeat." Because, really, this place is a dive even for a dive bar. "Y'know, I hate to say I told you so, general, but that supersoldier program was put on ice for a reason. I've always thought that hardware was much more reliable."

"Stark."

"General."

"You always wear such nice suits."

"I hear you have an unusual problem."

"You should talk." The general sneers, leaning back in his chair.

"You should listen."

"Who's you shadow?" Ross asks nodding at Darcy who is unfortunately dolled up in her slutty librarian. Tony takes great offense to having had to think that.

"Publicist. She's new. Trying to make sure nothing blows up." He shrugs. "She's a little hands-on. Not sure if publicist is actually the title Pepper assigned her. Not important. She's furniture as far as you're concerned."

"A little young for you, isn't she?" Ross leers a little at Darcy

"I'm actually in a relationship right now. She really isn't my type." Too incestuous or something in that vein of thought.

"What? Pretty little angel like this doesn't even tempt you? I'd heard those rumors." He sneers, running his eyes over Darcy's tight pencil shirt and dress shirt.

"General Ross." She waits until he's staring straight at her face. "My name is Miss Lewis. That is the only form of address that you need concern yourself with. I am not his date. I am his babysitter, here to make sure he remains dateless. And as such, I am terribly busy."

"Yes, ma'am." Ross smiles. Not actually that comforting, but that's the point. That was the point. Darcy can take of herself. Darcy does not need a knight in shining armor. Even armor as cool as the Iron Man.

"Yeah, well, Ross, I've been sent to see you about a horse." Tony decides even if she doesn't need rescuing, he needs for this meeting to go as quickly as possible.

"You, with SHIELD?" And there's the derision that Tony loves ever so much.

"A consultant." Tony nods.

"Sir, if I might be so bold?" Darcy steps forward, holding a StarkPad with footage of Harlem. Huh, where'd she get that? He didn't have that. He wanted that.

"Please, Miss Lewis."

"General Ross. Our friends at SHIELD are very interested in Captain Blonsky and his future posting."

"Blonsky? I would've thought they wanted to know about the Hulk."

"Do you have a bead on him?" Tony raises a mocking eyebrow, already knowing the answer.

"No." Ross' face crumples.

"Then why would we ask you about Banner? Banner's in the wind. You tried to bring him in, and you spooked him. You cornered him, and Harlem paid the price. So now SHIELD wants custody of Blonsky because you've proved that you can't be trusted with the responsibility of the supersoldier program."

"SHIELD wants Blonsky?" The general snorts derisively. "SHIELD doesn't want Blonsky."

Tony shrugs. "Apparently, SHIELD wants Blonsky badly enough to pay my exorbitant consulting fee to have me talk to you. As you've probably heard I've had a very busy week. SHIELD wants Blonsky. They're forming a team."

"Fury thinks Blonsky's unhinged."

Tony snorts. "You think the majority of SHIELD aren't unhinged? They run around fighting superpowered weirdos and terrorist organizations."

"Fury thinks Blonsky is a mad dog that needs to be put down."

"Fury's not my contact. My contact asked me to convince you to yield custody of Blonsky to SHIELD."

"You-"

"General Ross, it's very simple." Darcy cuts in, glaring at the seated man. "We need you to release Captain Emil Blonsky into SHIELD custody. There's no call for any rudeness."

"Rudeness?!"

"Mr. Stark is being completely honest with you, and you've called his integrity into question. We are here in an official capacity from SHIELD. To be duplicitous in such a situation would be unprofessional."

Ross snorts into his beer. "And Mr. Stark is never unprofessional? Please, woman, he was on C-SPAN the other day calling a senator an ass-clown."

Darcy draws herself up taller, getting her indignation on. "General-"

"No, Miss Lewis, I don't appreciate being played for a fool. You want Blonksy? Not gonna happen! No way. No how. He's a British national. We're just renting out his room until he can become their headache."

"So, that's it, then? We're done here?" Tony grins at Ross. He knows they're not. They need him madder. They need some damned righteous fury.

Darcy nods. "If the general can't help us, I believe so." She walks past Ross. Too close. Oh, she's giving him just enough rope.

Tony sees Ross decide and then the older man has a hold on Darcy's arm.

"Well, since you've completed your duty, why don't you stay a while? Have a drink with me?"

Darcy's voice has been calm and professional throughout the exchange, but now she turns a cold stare on Ross. "General, I would appreciate if you would release me."

"I don't think so. Hey, Ted, Mr. Stark is leaving without his employee. See him out, if you would?"

"Actually, Ted, if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to speak to you boss."

The bartender rolls his eyes and sighs, but he pulls a cordless phone from under the bar.

"Just what do you think you're doing?" Ross protests, standing up outraged and indignant.

"Sir, this is Iron Man. I get the feeling this isn't a fight you'll end up winning."

"Why, I-"

"Here," Ted shoves the phone at Tony. "Her name is Sascha."

"Oh, even better." Tony grins broadly. "Hello, Sascha."

There's a long pause on the other end of the line, then a long sigh. "Um, hello. Who's this?"

"Tony Stark." He grins at Ross.

"Oh." Yeah, he doesn't blame her for being a little startled.

"Yep. Terribly sorry to bother you, but I need to buy your bar."

She lets out a surprised laugh. But the punchline never comes. "Um, why?"

"Some ass is trying to force me from the premises. He was very rude to my female associate."

"Oh." And now there's a hint of steel to her voice. "You know I've been looking for someone to buy it from me. It was getting to be a little much for me."

"That's great!" He shoots a thumbs up at Darcy who looks up from her phone long enough to roll her eyes at him. "How much would you like for it?"

"To be honest I don't care. I'd take any offer really. This isn't just me wanting you to show up this asshole."

"So, five hundred would do it?"

"Um, a little-"

"No, don't misunderstand. I mean five hundred grand."

"Oh, I couldn't possibly-"

"Well, we'll figure that out at a later date." He picked up a napkin and started writing out a contract. "I'm going to leave the start of a contract here with Ted. Get it formalized and contact the number I leave on the napkin. We'll get all the legalities sorted later. If you could talk to Ted and transfer authority please."

Ted slowly reaches for the phone when Tony offers it. "Does this mean I'm fired?" He asks into the phone. "Um, right. Well, I wasn't really gonna kick Mr. Stark out.

"Yeah, um." He glances at the three focused on him. "It's General Ross. Yes, I know. But he- Right you don't- He, um, harassed Mr. Stark's publicist. Yeah, grabbed her arm and- I was! I was about to call him a cab and ask for his keys!

"Sascha! I swear- Yeah, I know." Ted sighs and puts down the phone. "Mr. Stark, as the representative of Sascha Robles, I'd like to transfer management and ownership of this establishment contingent on the promise of more formal documentation."

Tony grins and slams the napkin down on the bar. "Agreed!" He glances at Ross out of the corner of his eye. "With that said." Tony suck in a deep breath and turns to General Ross. He straightens to his full height, still an inch or so shorter but honestly who cares. "General Ross, as part of my right to refuse service to any patron, I must ask that you vacate the premises."

Darcy takes a step forward to draw the men's focus. "I've taken the liberty of securing a car service for the general. They will take you anywhere you need. They've been secured for the remainder of the day." Her phone makes a quiet ding. She smiles politely at it. "Ah, they've arrived. Excellent service. If you would, General."

Ross draws himself up on his absent dignity. "Ms. Lewis, I'm a general in the US Army. I don't know who you think you're talking to but it sure as hell isn't me."

He takes a step forward at her, but Tony steps in front of her. "General. If you touch her again, we're going to have bigger problems than whether or not you can get Blonsky released into SHIELD custody."

"Oh yeah, Stark? What kind of problems am I going to have?"

"You're going to have legal problems form here until the end of time. Because my legal department is terrifying." Tony grins to himself, thinking of his latest security breach. "And quite possibly Russian."

Ross frowns. "What?"

Tony laughs, a little manically if he's honest. But really nothing good comes from the shit. "Nothing." He makes a vague waving gestures. He's not really sure what that means either.

"Stark, if you're quite through. Your legal team doesn't scare me."

"That just means that you're a fool." Tony is actually a little surprised to hear the words coming from Darcy. It's what he was about to say or close enough. "This man is ridiculous. His legal team is finely honed and pacing, waiting for the inevitable fight they know they're going to have. If you end up before them." She laughs. "They're going to chew you up and spit you out for wasting their time."

"Listen to me, you little girl-"

And suddenly the general is on the ground grasping his shin and nose. Darcy stands over him and glares down at him. "Excuse you, general. I am grown fucking woman, and you do not get to belittle me based on my gender. I am not your daughter." She tilts her head, expression contemplative. "Even if I were, Elizabeth fucking Ross is a bad-ass. I'm pretty sure she hasn't taken your shit for years. She is successful in her own right and is brave enough to face rage incarnate and calm said rage."

She snorts at him. "And that's in spite of you, you stupid fuck." She rolls her eyes and storms out the bar's front door.

Tony grins at Ross. "Pick your jaw up off the floor. She's something else, isn't she?"

"Who is she really?" Huh, maybe Ross isn't as stupid as he seems.

"That's for me to know, Thunderbolt."

"And me to find out?"

"Not if I can help it."

Darcy looks back in. "General, you car is about to leave. You either get in, or you get walking."

Ross picks himself up with a small groan and as little retained dignity as a man in a uniform can have. He grabs his coat and strides out the door.

Ted sighs. "He didn't pay, y'know."

Tony shrugs. "Put it on my tab."

"She's your daughter, isn't she?"

Tony tenses infinitesimally. He shrugs.

"I thought so. I'm a dad, too."

"Not the best recommendation. Ross is a dad." Not to mention Howard.

"Ross was a genetic donor and a drill sergeant, I'm betting. From what the young lady yelled at him, that is."

Tony shrugs again. "I was more of the crazy uncle, swooping in to have fun adventures and spoil her rotten. I would not have made good father material."

"She doesn't seem to think there's anything wrong with you."

"She's biased. She's also more like me than I'd have ever wished for another human being to be."

"So, what're you planning for the space? Keeping it as is?"

"No, I'm thinking an office building. You have any experience in architecture?" Tony always pushes his luck.

Ted snorts. "The world is small, Mr. Stark, but not that small."

"True, very true. What do you think should be here?"

"A rec center?"

"Hmmm, the community need that?"

"It'd be refreshing. A sort of revival."

"How's that?"

"Oh, for a while years ago, there used to be a community watch. They were half a step from vigilantes, but they kept the neighborhood safe."

"Oh, yeah? When was that?"

"Oh, years, back when I was a kid. No one really knew why they did it, but they called themselves the 107th."

The 107th. Of course. Tony rolls his eyes. "Because this is Brooklyn?"

"Because Steven Rogers came from here."

Tony hangs his head. God, this ghost will never stop following him. "How many people here actually know that name?"

Ted grins with a shrug. "You never know. Legends reach far. Enough people remembered that he came from here, and the Army put a statue of him up in the park."

"Oh, God."

"Yeah, I guess. But he was important. Even he was just a symbol. Even if he didn't come from here-"

"Oh, he did." Darcy interrupts, slouching into a barstool next to Tony. "His old apartment isn't far from here. So what's the word? We done here?"

"Yeah, for now. Remember, Ted, I need to hear from Sascha soon."

"Sure."

Darcy salutes as she follows Tony from the bar. "So, what's the fearsome Ms. Potts gonna think of that?"

"Oh, she's gonna be furious, but she'll make it work. We'll set up a rec center through the Maria Stark Foundation."

"Named after the Captain?"

"Oh, hell no. I will throw a fit if that happens."

"You realize it probably will, right?"

"I'm anticipating the fit fondly."

"So, relationship?"

"Right, um, me and Pepper are giving it a shot?"

"Are you asking me?"

"No. I'm- That was a statement."

"Sure didn't sound like one."

"It was. I'm dating Pepper. It's new. Lovely."

"Lots of sex?"

"God, I wish you were less like me."

"No, you really don't."

"I really do."

"If you say so."

"Is this gonna be a problem?"

"I don't know. I don't think so."

"I think she should know about you."

"Probably. She probably should've known about me the first month after she worked for you when you told me that this was the one. That she was the PA you wanted to die with."

"Yeah, I was so drunk."

"I know, but we still probably should've told her a while ago. Why didn't we? What about this new relationship means so much that we need to change how we deal with this?"

"Are you saying you don't want to tell her?"

"I'm making sure you know what's at stake. You tell her this and you have to explain why this has never come up before. You good with that?"

"After the- After-"

"I get it, Tony. What happened 'after'?"

"She told me that I was all she had. Then I asked her to take out the old reactor. I told her to destroy it but she encased it in glass. She saved my life."

"What?"

"O- Stane, he took out the reactor. He shut down JARVIS. I crawled down to the workshop to get the old reactor. Hah, Pep and DUM-E, they saved me together."

"Did he bring it to you?"

"Yeah. So, it's okay if I tell Pepper and Happy?"

"Maybe not Happy. I think I wanna tell him myself. I wanna make fun of his nickname when we meet."

"Okay."

"Tony?"

"Yeah?"

She bites her lip. Then something hardens in her eyes, and she gets right up into his face. "I want a suit."

"Um, what?" Because that can't have been what she said. She couldn't ask him that. "You want want a what?"

"You gave Rhodey a suit. I want one, too."

"This isn't a game. These things are dangerous. Rhodey is a military officer. You're- you're a fucking co-ed."

"I'm gonna get roped into this line of work in some way or another. I want to make sure that I can handle anything that comes at me."

"Darcy, you know how you hate rollercoasters? This is orders of magnitude worse than that."

She sets her stance a little firmer. "I'll make my own. I still have access to all your shops. I'm sure I could bypass JARVIS well enough to hide from you for at least as long as it takes to get a good start."

"No."

"Tony-"

"No, Echo. This is non-negotiable. Anything else. Hell, I'll even teach you how to shoot, but you can't ask this of me. I can't lose you to this."

"Tony-"

"No, I'm serious, kid."

"This isn't for you!"

"What?"

"I hated the suit when you first came out with it. You almost died at least twice. Apparently more than that though. And I couldn't do anything. We've both said it. Dave and Maddie have said it. I too much like you, and I can't stand being helpless.

"I stole some footage from SHIELD. You were great. But you still almost died. Rhodey's suit was hacked but even when he got control back, you guys still almost lost.

"I don't want to be a superhero, but I can't stand being without every resource possible. I'm gonna be in proximity of all the chaos. So this isn't a request, so that I can fight. I'm doing it to ensure I can't get caught in the crossfire. If I happen to make sure that as few other normal people get caught in that crossfire."

Then she just glares at him. Just holds his gaze like only she and Pep have ever been able to do. "So that I can't be used as leverage."

He sighs. "I need you to wait. Just wait until- Fuck. I don't know. I just need you to wait."

"You have one year. I'm not waiting more than one year. Not one second longer."

"I- Okay. I just really wanted to keep you from this particular rabbit hole."

Her gaze softens at that. "No such luck, I'm afraid, Mr Hatter. I'm pretty sure I'm already standing before the Red Queen awaiting my sentence."

He shuts his eyes tight, trying not to see the little girl she used to be standing in front of a throne dripping in blood. "I just-"

"I know, but remember. One year from today."

"Right." He'll do everything he can to break this promise. She's used to it. Tony Stark never keeps his promises. Not even to his daughter.


End file.
